Some of Ross' old fans, used to Panic's rhapsodic dissections of romantic failings, might find it a touch disingenuous, especially as Southern California bands such as Wavves and Best Coast have already capitalized on similarly beachy vibes.
The Young Veins, a start-up rock and roll band that's just released their first album and is heading out on a long nationwide tour of small clubs. In front is Ryan Ross, 23, guitar and vocals. Left to right: Jon Walker, 24, guitar/vocals; Nick White, 28, keyboard; Andy Soukal, 24, bass/vocals; and Nick Murray, 25, drums. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times / June 9, 2010)
Last July, Ryan Ross made a seemingly misguided decision -- at least to those harboring teen dreams of rock mega-stardom.
His Las Vegas-based rock quartet Panic! at the Disco had finished a round of touring arenas to support its ambitious and critically lauded second album, "Pretty. Odd," which followed its 2005 genre-defining, platinum-selling emo breakthrough, "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out." Ross penned most of that band's material, including the radio staple "I Write Sins, Not Tragedies," with a memorably profane depiction of a cheating bride.
But Ross, at 22, was unhappy. His songwriting had veered in a more modish, vintage pop direction, and the band's rehearsals felt forced and uncomfortable. So he and bandmate Jon Walker abruptly quit Panic to start a new project, the Young Veins, inspired by '60s British Invasion and California pop like the Zombies and Love.
In 2008, Panic headlined the Staples Center. Last month, the Young Veins played the creaky, perilous loft of Origami Vinyl in Echo Park to a capacity crowd of about 50.
"In Panic, we were playing the biggest shows a band could possibly play, but we weren't having any fun," Ross said. "I couldn't understand why it felt like such a chore. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't worry about [my career] today. But onstage, I'm having way more fun now."
For frontman Ross, Walker and the other Young Veins -- bassist Andy Soukal, drummer Nick Murray and keyboardist Nick White -- "fun" is the welcome but fraught new operating principle for their debut album, "Take a Vacation!"
Some of Ross' old fans, used to Panic's rhapsodic dissections of romantic failings, might find it a touch disingenuous, especially as Southern California bands such as Wavves and Best Coast have already capitalized on similarly beachy vibes.
But after vaulting to fame as a teenager in a beloved-and-derided band that could afford a team of onstage stilt-walkers, Ross and Walker earned a holiday to reinvent themselves as songwriters.
Over lunch at the Standard Hotel in West Hollywood, Ross still cuts a figure worthy of the arena-filling life. At 4 in the afternoon, he's dressed in a dashingly skinny black suit and paisley tie. A sandwich goes largely untouched; a bloody mary and vodka tonic vanish more quickly.
But everything else in his life, both personally and creatively, has changed radically. Ross moved to Los Angeles two years ago, and after a stint couch-surfing in Topanga Canyon, this year he bought a hilltop home in Echo Park and became a gadfly among the neighborhood's young musician and bar-goer coterie.
He admits that the transition from playing basketball arenas in ascots and elaborate eye makeup to impromptu jams at Echo Park's hipster house parties felt disorienting at first, especially when new friends asked about his musical past. But Ross feels more at home in L.A.'s eastern climes than anywhere he's lived yet.
"Vegas was so creepy," he said of his adolescent hometown. "It's inspiring to live in Echo Park and see people you know at the coffee shop and meet players who push you."
The scuffed mod-pop of Young Veins shows how far Ross has pulled away from Panic's computer-addled grandiosity. To Ross, the hormonal first Panic album "feels so foreign it's like a time capsule," he said. "I'm not embarrassed by it, but I can't believe I wrote it."
Ross and Walker recorded "Vacation" live with Alex Greenwald, frontman of Phantom Planet, and Rob Mathes, who produced Panic's second album but is better known for working with older artists such as Rod Stewart and Carly Simon. After leaving Panic, a band signed off of MySpace demos and made deliriously famous in a matter of months, Ross and Walker had to learn the gritty business of writing again.
"Panic made us feel like we could conquer the world, but we only really had one album as a band," Walker said. "For Ryan and I, all we ever wanted to do was write good songs."
Their new songs feel strikingly handmade. The guitars chime and jangle a bit off the metronome; drums get by on a single room microphone, and every sonic corner is full of sweet-tempered and unedited vocal harmonies. A crackling organ drives the head-bopping title track, and "Maybe I Will, Maybe I Won't" could skip along the Thames with the Kinks.
As a singer, Ross nails an inviting cross section of California earnestness and Anglophile melodic wit.
"Kids today don't give a care about the Beatles being some kind of holy church where you can't touch the pews," producer Mathes said. "It was never a calculated thing for them, and Ryan and Jon are fantastically intelligent songwriters that just happen to love the '60s."
"Vacation" is a melodically rich mash note to Ross' favorite era in music, but his very modern cynicism still occasionally drips into the Veins' lyrics. On the chipper "Young Veins (Die Tonight)," Ross lances both his own youth and his time on the rock god carousel: "Is 'young' a word for dumb, a word for fun? / We have the time of our lives, every night, like it's our job to lose our minds."
"This record is an answer to not being happy," Phantom Planet's Greenwald said. "Ryan's yearning and restless, and that image of the beach is where he strives to be."
The Young Veins are a new installment in a long story of musicians who come to L.A. to reimagine themselves. It's not often that a millions-selling songwriter feels humbled at 23. But starting a band in Los Angeles will do that to you.
"As a teenager, I thought I knew everything about music," Ross said. "The older I get the more I realize I know less and less. But it makes me want to get better."
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