ONE AND DONE: "Take A Vacation!" by The Young Veins

Happy New Year, motherfuckers! I hope you all liked John's review of GTR and I hope you all hated the album as much as I did. I also want to thank everyone who made 2022 a special first year for ROUGE! and I want to thank everyone who reads these articles that both John and myself write, this is ultimately a passion project for us outside our shenanigans in the world of ROUGE!.

Anyway, during the review for Fitz and the Tantrums I kinda went through a moment where I started experiencing some major burnout on writing only about shitty albums I don't like so I passed on the December spot to John so he could write about this album he wanted to write about for a long time, and while he did that a thought a came to pass so with that we're unveiling a new series for the blog called ONE AND DONE where we write about bands who did one (1) album and then called it quits for one reason or another. John made a joke when I pitched this that the GTR review was basically a backdoor pilot for this and he's not entirely wrong. For this series we're going to deviate a little bit from THE ALBUMS THAT RUINED US in the sense that there will be a bit more structure; we'll be looking into the history of the group in question, go over their album, talk about why they didn't release a second album, and whether or not a second album would've even been any good if they did put one out while closing out with some musings and lamenting about the artist in question. New year, new concepts, new lease on life and all that good shit.

But why this concept?

Well, it's unknown to many here but believe it or not, my favorite musical trope is actually "the difficult second album." Not the "sophomore slump," that's entirely different. I'm talking about the second album that is such a radical change of pace from their first one for one reason or another. A band or artist will put out their first album and it either gets a lot of love immediately upon release or it goes on to slowly become a cult classic, but then their second album often gets some head-scratching reaction of "what is this?" (...looking at Pinkerton on this one) or maybe a band decides to experiment with their sound a little bit to interesting results (see: LP2 by Sunny Day Real Estate, an album made quite literally as the band was breaking up and falling apart, and my personal favorite in this particular trope) and end up in curious territory.

Many bands and artists will have that difficult second album and then eventually either go on to have success or will eventually fade away, which are both normal arcs for bands and artists, but some don't even get as far as the second album. Hell, some barely get as far as the first album, and usually there's an interesting story behind it, and that's where ONE AND DONE comes in. With this series there's only one qualification for being featured; if at the time of writing the subject is a band or artist with only one official studio album to their name they're open for discussion.

There's a lot of fascinating artists who are one-album wonders whose story should be told and heard by plenty, so what's going on here with this band? Why am I picking The Young Veins to kick this series off? Well... to get there we need to talk about a lot of things surrounding the album first including how we got there in the first place.

Spoiler alert: In case you didn't know already, it all starts with Panic! At The Disco.

In 2022 Panic! At The Disco came back with a new album which, outside of their usual hardcore fanbase, was met with the general response of "yuck," and while that has been the consensus of their work over the last few albums in particular, there was a song that really stuck out to a lot of folks upon first listen entitled "Local God." The song itself is alright, I guess, but what really poked out to a lot of folks were the lyrics.

In 1998, you bought a B.C. Rich
You were a master shredder from the jump
Blew them all away with the Ritalin kids
While I was shedding through my sophomore slump
You had so many chances to become a star
But you never really cared about that

Local God
You'll live forever as a local God
You'll be remembered for the thing you're not
Local God

We signed a record deal at seventeen
Hated by every local band
They say we never paid our dues
But what does that mean when money never changes hands?
It's 2021 and I'm almost famous
You never really cared about that

Panic! At The Disco, "Local God" (2022)

Many people read those lyrics and only thought one thing; Brendon Urie was taking presumably unprovoked jabs at former bandmate Ryan Ross.

In 2004, Panic! At The Disco wasn't the Brendon Urie show the way it is now 18 years later, in fact it was a full-fledged bonafide band. The original version of P!ATD consisted of Brendon Urie on guitar and vocals, Brent Wilson on bass, Spencer Smith on drums, and Ryan Ross on guitar and occasionally doing lead vocals himself.

So who the fuck was Ryan Ross anyway? And why was Urie taking cheap shots at him?

Urie was the singer and the frontman for Panic!, but Ryan Ross was the one who wrote a decent-sized chunk of the music and all of the lyrics to their first album which contains one of the most famous songs of all-time from the mid-oos wave of emo. Yeah, he also wrote all the words on that first album, so if you didn't know already; all those lyrics you sing along to all the time were written by Ryan Ross, and unless you're a Panic! super-fan there's a pretty solid chance you didn't know that because Ryan Ross is a name that has faded into the background on more than a few occasions.

Ryan Ross was on the first two Panic! albums, 2005's A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, and 2008's Pretty. Odd.. On Fever you can hear the band's Blink-182 influence come through, especially on "The Only Difference Between..." and the particularly underrated "Lying Is The Most Fun...", but those influences more or less went out the window on Pretty. Odd., where they not only replaced Brent Wilson with Jon Walker, but they also took pages out of the playbook of 60s folk, garage rock, and psychedelia while meshing it ever-so-slightly with their pop-punk edge. Personally, I'd recommend that entire album from front to back but if you're pressed for time, "Northern Downpour" and "Pas De Cheval" are a couple deeper cuts to check out because I'm sure that plenty of non-superfans have heard "Nine In The Afternoon" a bunch if only through its inclusion on the Rock Band 2 video game. The band as a whole did contribute songs to Pretty. Odd. but when you look at the songwriting credits you'll find out the heavy majority of it was written by Ross.

It doesn't take a genius to hear the very obvious differences between albums 1&2, and particularly the direction Ross wanted to push the band in (which would've built upon the sounds of Pretty. Odd.) and that was, in part, the beginning of the end of the Ryan Ross era of Panic! At The Disco.

In 2009 Ross and Walker announce they're leaving the band, and it eventually comes out that it was, in fact, due to creative differences. The songs Ross and Walker were writing together for what was supposed to be P!ATD LP3 were more in line with the sounds of The Kinks and The Beach Boys whereas Urie and Smith wanted to go in more of a poppier-styled direction. In short...

"Musically, it got to a roadblock, and we were going one way and they were going the other. But fans will be able to hear it soon enough. And then maybe they'll change their minds."

Ryan Ross, MTV interview (2009)

Soon after the announcement of their departure Ross and Walker would announce the name of their project, christening themselves as The Young Veins, and that the name of their first album would be called Take A Vacation!

When I started doing research for this album and the history of the band I found that there were a few major recurring themes that came up, but the biggest one was regarding the band being able to find a label to put this album out on. Pete Wentz, the bassist for Fall Out Boy and head of the label Panic! At The Disco was on, Fueled By Ramen, made it pretty clear early on when the two camps had split that he was going to support Urie and Smith even though Ross' songwriting was primarily what got the band to where they were in the first place. Ross was still contractually obligated to put out music for Fueled By Ramen and had to fight to get released from his contract so he and Walker could make music together and release The Young Veins' material as a group. The album had been completed by the end of 2009 but they weren't able to find a label that would release it until 2010, which that alone should've been a huge red flag. The album got released, though, and in the end that's really all that matters. Shortly afterward they would debuted a song on MySpace that would eventually become the opening song for the album, it's called "Change."

Let's hear how this album kicks off via this fairly low-quality music video from 2009 that was recently (2018ish?) uploaded to their YouTube page. Does anything get anyone from that millennial generation more nostalgic than seeing low-quality videos from the dawning of the age of YouTube? I digress.

Okay, that rips. I kinda like that subtle Bo Diddley shuffle it's got going on. It's not just a straight-forward pop song, it's got moving parts. And the lyric sheet is short (as it is for all the songs on this album) but Ryan is straight-up smack-talking some unnamed woman who "thought she owned the city" and learned "pretty ain't a job." It's a nice little introduction to the album as a whole.

The title track follows that opener and, in short, it's as close as this album gets to a perfect song which makes sense in a way after all; if you're going to name your album after a song it better be representative of the album as a whole. This song is relatively short clocking in at under two and a half minutes and yet it feels like it could go on for longer. They'll introduce a guitar part or an organ lick at just the right time, and when you think the song runs out of tricks it manages to add another one. Ross' vocals are spot-on and Walker's subtle backing vocals add just the right flavor to the song as well. For a band whose entire thing was just about sounding "vintage" they knock it out of the park on this because it does, in fact, sound like the sort of obscure gem I would've heard on some late 60s psychedelic sunshine pop album.

Lyrically the song is a lot less cheery than the music suggests, it's actually a song about being burnt the fuck out by life, which it even tells us as much in the opening line of...

I need to take a vacation if this is settling down

The Young Veins, "Take A Vacation" (2010)

Elsewhere on the track Ross sings about how loneliness will keep "them" warm and how they can "leave sand in a suitcase so they don't forget the fun" while they go "very very far." It's a nice little song with catchy hook lyrically containing a surprisingly fucking downer mood.

"Cape Town" has the daunting task of following up the title track but it's certainly more than up to the challenge. Allegedly the song is based on a true story of Ross falling in love with a woman in the titular Cape Town in South Africa where, as it turns out, she had a husband already who was in prison. It has these nice jangly guitar leads and some nice bells alongside some interesting percussion choices that give it some of that fascinating flavor. Personally, I always thought the song was just okay but apparently a lot of people really like it and it wouldn't surprise me if it was because of the autobiographical lyrics. I will say this though, Ryan's vocal lead on this absolutely fucking stands up on its own. His voice never had a whole lot of range but he definitely stretches it out a bit on here to more than pleasant results.

"Maybe I Will Maybe I Won't" comes up next and is the first song on the album sung by Jon Walker, who also presumably was the primary songwriter on this as well. Truthfully, it's okay I guess, though more than anything it acts as somewhat of a reminder of the albums I listen to from the early-to-mid-60s where they had to have some filler tracks in there to make it a full-blown "album" in the traditional sense. There's nothing really noteworthy here but it's also not awful. Ross and Walker's vocals blend nicely together on this one though. Take it as it comes.

"Young Veins (Die Tonight)" acts as the perfect track to pick up the album's spirits following that underwhelming song. Remember earlier in this when I mentioned that the majority of the songs on here were songs that Ross and Walker were writing for the third Panic! At The Disco album? That absolutely comes through here. Simply put, this song sounds like the main example of that anecdote. That vocal melody sounds like it was tailor-made for Brendon Urie's voice, and while Ross does his best to deliver it on his own it kinda falls short considering who we could've had singing it in the first place. The music sounds like the perfect backing track for a P!ATD song as well, and it acts as an overall gentle reminder of what we never got. Even lyrically it kinda hits upon the more theatrical side of what would make P!ATD work in their prime while also being what would contribute to their major fall from grace. It's Ryan Ross' tenure in Panic! personified.

Up next we get the beautiful, somber, lowkey "Everyone But You." Jon sings on this one and it's truly one of the highlights of the album. The song itself is a bit moody and thrives on what could only be described as a sensual and remorseful vibe. The music itself is really pretty and sparse, but the keyboards are ultimately what give the track that extra "oomph."

There's yearning for an unnamed someone in these lyrics that I haven't seen many folks match in a long time, especially in the chorus.

She comes to me when I dream
I'm tired of counting sheep to see her
I sleep because I need her
And everybody knows it but you

The Young Veins, "Everyone But You" (2010)

Walker's lyrics have always been somewhat simplistic, but sometimes that simplicity is good when it's delivered with the punch it has on here. It's a song that makes me miss people I haven't met yet and makes me yearn for places I've never been to.

The second half of the record proper (yeah, no, I'm not including the bonus tracks from the 2019 deluxe edition) starts off with "The Other Girl."

This one is an absolute barnburner of a track even if it doesn't immediately come off as such. Musically there isn't much to say about it, it's in the same style as the other songs on the album, and that's not necessarily a bad thing though it kinda has a bit more of a charge to it than a lot of the other tunes. The lyrics recount a conversation that the song's narrator is having with someone about their lover's affair with the titular "other girl." Who the characters are in this case is left somewhat ambiguous because even though he's singing about the "you" and "I" of it all, this could still just be the perspective of the characters and not so much autobiographical. It's one of those songs that Ross absolutely does his best to sell vocally while playing with another jangly backing tune, and that's what makes it a standout track. It also ends, what in my opinion, is a standout three-track run.

"Dangerous Blues" is not part of that standout run for a reason, it's not that it's a particularly bad song but it feels like it kills the momentum set up by the three that come before it. It's a nice little acoustic waltz of a tune with the lyrics talking about being in love with someone who is generally an emotionally unavailable person. On the whole, "Dangerous Blues" feels like the sort of song that could work if the lyrics felt like they weren't trying too hard to be ambiguous and vague and worked more towards something direct. I will say this though, all "your love is a drug" sentiments in any song usually get met with an eye roll from me, so I'm sorry on that front.

"Defiance" has the vibes of being another song that was originally designed to be another Panic! At The Disco tune and though for a long time I couldn't tell if it was the dynamics of the song where it would go from fuzzy guitars to just-drum verses to backing "ahh" vocals on the chorus, it all clicked together when I saw this photo from 2008 of the Pretty. Odd. lineup on a bridge that said "defiance" on it. Though it's never been directly confirmed whether or not the photo inspired the song, there is no such thing as coincidence in the world of The Young Veins. The lyrics here talk about someone who goes against the grain and lives their life the way they want to, in defiance of what others say, but then it goes and gives us that subtle twist at the end for what this song may be all about, really.

Yeah, she said that it was rust and lead
That love could never live again
But they found a way, to make it stay
In defiance, she asked, defiance, she asked:

"Can't we just be friends?"
This kind of thing always happens
I fell in love again
With defiance

The Young Veins, "Defiance" (2010)

Even when it's not originally coming off a love song, it always finds a way to go back to the unnamed "she/her" in these tunes. This one kinda works though.

"Lie To The Truth" is another lowkey song that has the displeasure of following a barnburner on this album. Truthfully there isn't much to talk about here in regards to the actual song itself. It's another acoustic-driven song that tells the story of a guy who doesn't feel bad cheating on his girlfriend because he suspects she's been cheating on him, too. It's also guilty of one of my least favorite musical tropes; mentioning "this song" directly in the song. I don't care who you are, the minute you drop that in a track I immediately clock the fuck out on it. Also, quite honestly, it's amazing that Ryan Ross could get away with writing stuff like this because it kinda makes him sound like a fuckboy.

The album closes out with "Heart of Mine," another acoustic song that features more of a campfire atmosphere to it with numerous folks singing backing vocals and stomping to a song about how an unnamed love interest will "always have this heart of mine." It's actually pretty sweet in the grand scheme of things. Some songs can only work as opening tracks on an album, some tracks can only work as closing tracks on an album, and this track is one that could have only ever worked as a closing track. The album closes out with Jon Walker saying "happy birthday, Ryan!" before everyone cheers and the album closes off as a whole.

Alright. We're done there. Was it any good?

Honestly, yeah I think so. The lyrics leave a lot to be desired at certain points and I would never accuse Take A Vacation! as a whole of being full of deep poetry that is on par with Bringing It All Back Home but also the album works more as an overall mood piece than as a group of songs to academically dissect, ironically kind of ruining the point of what this series of writings is all about.

Ryan Ross gets the job done as a vocalist but occasionally I'm reminded that there's a reason Brendon Urie was the lead vocalist of Panic! At The Disco and not Ross. As mentioned earlier, Ross' vocal range is very little and he really tries his hardest to stretch his voice out, but I can still acknowledge that Urie was on Broadway and has had the success he still has for a reason and it's because he's got a set of pipes on him.

There's definitely a lot of standalone tracks that I really love here, but as a whole album I'd still give it a thumbs up, however it's a thumbs up in the "7.5/10" variety and not "10/10."

Reviews for the album were overall fairly positive though it feels like reading them suggests that the reviewers were more concerned with naming the influences on the band and not so much with the actual music itself. It's pretty much impossible to find a review that doesn't name check The Beatles, The Kinks, The Zombies, or [place popular 60s group here]. Rightfully so at times, but the reviews all felt like they were placing the group themselves on the back seat while talking at length about other bands.

This series talks about bands and artists who only put out one album, so why is this their only album at the time of this writing?

About that...

In December 2010, a mere six months after the record came out, Jon Walker tweeted that the band was on an indefinite hiatus. The reasons for the hiatus have never been made public and are only known to the folks in the band's respective camps as far as I know. There can only be so much speculation as to what happened where, but truthfully I have my suspicions though I don't think I can lay them out there without rubbing some the wrong way. I'll try anyway.

Personally, I think part of it has to do with Jon Walker wanting to write and sing more songs as evidenced by the plethora of stuff he's released on Bandcamp ever since the band broke up including an EP of material that was released a month after the band split, but also it wouldn't surprise me to find that it has a lot to do with Ryan Ross just being burnt the fuck out by life judging by the complete lack of material he's put out since 2010. He didn't go into "exile" necessarily but he's been very quiet since The Young Veins split, and he's probably more than content with living off the royalty checks from his Panic! days. I can share that Ross did do this thing in 2019, coming out of that very weird sort of somewhat "exile" to tour alongside his ex-wife/now-best-friend Z. Berg and a rotating cast of musicians. You can hear the excitement in the audience when they realize what's about to happen and it's a truly magical moment. Allegedly Ross also hit the studio in 2019 to start work on a solo album, but news on that front has been somewhat quiet which unfortunately doesn't surprise me in the least. At this rate it seems more likely that Jeff Mangum is going to stroll out of the studio with a follow-up to In The Aeroplane Over The Sea than it is that Ryan Ross is going to come out of the woodwork again to give us new material.

In 2019 a deluxe edition of Take A Vacation! was released online that included a whole plethora of bonus tracks, mostly cover songs that made up the bonus tracks from various online released when the record originally came out. Anything good here? Well, technically yes, though the song that stands out more than any other to me is their cover of Wanda Jackson's "Funnel of Love." Jon sings on that one and it kinda just works as a whole even more-so than the original version of the song in part because of the vaguely James Bond feel it exudes. Some people have speculated that between the deluxe reissue of Take A Vacation! and Ryan Ross slowly coming back out of the woodwork there may be a reunion on the horizon but honestly even if that was ever a plan I'm pretty sure COVID killed any possibility of that happening. Would it be nice if it happened? Sure, but I'm not counting on it.

Anything Else?

Okay, we've talked a bunch about The Young Veins and the impact that their story had, what happened on the other side of the split-up Panic! At The Disco camp? Well, Urie and Smith would go on to record and eventually release Vices and Virtues in 2011 which featured a Ryan Ross-penned tune that closed off the album, and the group would ultimately take on a much different direction with their sound than where Ryan Ross and Jon Walker would soon be headed. Eventually Smith left the band as well leaving Brendon Urie to be the sole remaining member of the original lineup. Panic! At The Disco would eventually become Urie's solo project after bassist Dallon Weekes left the band to start his own group, I DON'T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME. For my money I've gotten more enjoyment out of any given IDKHBTFM release than anything Urie has released post-Death of a Bachelor. In a way I find the entire split and the subsequent directions that both camps went in to be a representation of rather interesting crossroads for the band. We could've very easily gotten the alternate-universe version of P!ATD where Ross and Walker stayed on board and controlled the direction of the band and they kept getting more and more "vintage" with their sound, but instead we got the version that tried to keep going after radio airplay and chasing after the big hits, and all due respect to Urie because the dude's clearly a great vocalist who has more than paid his dues and cut his teeth doing some ballsy stuff including that run on Broadway, but for god's sake the man needs people to write his songs for him because his attempts at trying to chase pop hits since Weekes left have been horrid to say the very least.

Would A Second Album Be Good?

...I know a second album would've been good but I'm not sure it would've been the jump from good to great that they would've inevitably strived for, though truthfully I think they would've found their footing better as a group. On Take A Vacation! The Young Veins sound so obsessed with sounding "vintage," almost to a fault, that some of the songs on that album didn't sound so great as just general basic songs. Personally, I would've rather heard what they themselves sounded like instead of trying to pursue "sounding vintage." If Jon Walker contributed more songs in the style of "Everyone But You" and was more the Paul McCartney to Ryan's John Lennon and less George Harrison then I could totally picture a second album from these guys being a bit better. Maybe if they didn't split and kept releasing music they wouldn't have been as big as Panic! At The Disco but they certainly would've gone the route of being critical indie darlings because all the tools for them to do so were right there.

Did They Deserve Better?

One of the top comments on the music video for "Take A Vacation" with over 600 "likes" simply states, "admit it: we all took it for granted." I think that sums it up perfectly. Ryan Ross hasn't put out a full-length album in over 10 years and in his absence he's slowly become something of a cult hero for taking the reins in the early days of Panic! At The Disco as well as quarterbacking The Young Veins, in short he's written the majority of the material on three separate albums that have all stood the test of time in their own special ways. In a way though there's something oddly "on-brand" for The Young Veins that Take A Vacation! is something of a forgotten cult classic much like many of the great works of the 60s they tried so hard to emulate. I think Jon Walker definitely deserved better as well, especially when one considers his Home Recordings EP which was released a month after The Young Veins split. Those songs are as sharp and beautiful as anything off Take A Vacation! and it shows.

I think in the context of Ryan Ross and Brendon Urie it would be nice to see the two of them patch things up. I'm not a Panic! "stan" by any stretch of the imagination so having done some research as to what happened between the two, I came across some really disturbing stuff that I'm not going to share here but I'll sum it up as "wow some fans are fucking insane." Allegedly Urie reached out after seeing Ross in 2015 but Ross never texted back or reached out, in part because of the "disturbing stuff" I would imagine. I would also imagine that Urie's jabs at Ross on "Local God" are coming from a place of hurt though because all evidence seems to suggest that Brendon Urie misses his friend deep down and is upset they've never reconciled. Also notable is that Panic! At The Disco as a stage act doesn't really perform anything off those first two albums aside from "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" and "Nine in the Afternoon," and even then I would speculate that if he could cut those out of the setlist entirely then Urie absolutely would.

Ross' name admittedly does come up a lot from people trying to badmouth Urie (and for somewhat rightful reasons... go look it up on your own time) but this tweet perfectly sums up my feelings on the matter.

"if y'all really meant it when you said 'ryan ross supremacy' the young veins would have more than 100k monthly listeners ... to be clear i do not like brendon urie HOWEVER people do a lot of talking about ryan ross when dragging him just to not actually care about him and that is what bothers me. slander brendon urie all you want but dont use ryan's name if you dont actually care about the dude"

@fandomphobic, Twitter (8/7/22)

Ross not being in Panic! has been a sore spot for a lot of folks, and rightfully so; the man helped write two of the coolest albums this writer has heard in a hot minute with that band, but to put it simply don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. Ryan Ross helped build up the world of Panic! At The Disco and gave us P!ATD as we used to know it, the version which has stood the test of time. It's pretty cool that he had that second act of his career where The Young Veins was Ross' attempt at writing the music he wanted to make and not the music he felt like he was going to be pressured into making by other bandmates. With all that said at the end of the day, who knows, maybe one day Ross and Urie will put their differences and grievances aside and come together to perform together once again and give the fans what they want. It would truly be a remarkable moment of healing for all involved parties, and I'd be all here for it.

This is Harvey VD reminding you to kick out the ROUGE! motherfuckers. Peace!