"We felt that [the new album's title] was probably the best way to describe the songs, if you listen to all of them as a package," said drummer and founding member Spencer Smith from London, where the band was in the final stages of mixing "Pretty. Odd."

"There are songs that are pretty. There are songs that are odd. And songs that are pretty odd. Ryan came up with that one night when we were just about to go in the studio. It just kind of stuck. I guess nobody came up with anything better. It seems to be, actually, a pretty good title."

The band--which also includes vocalist/guitarist Brendon Urie, guitarist/keyboardist Ryan Ross and bassist/keyboardist Jon Walker--was a little more mysterious about the new album cover. In mid- to late January, Panic at the Disco released puzzle pieces on various websites. Once fans collected all the pieces, the "Pretty. Odd." cover was revealed.

During the mid-January interview, Smith spoke to LiveDaily about the sarcastic new song "We're So Starving," signing on with the Honda Civic Tour [ tickets ] and the production values of the forthcoming shows.

LiveDaily: How's the mixing process going?

Spencer Smith: It's going good. Today's our last day, actually. We're in London and it's about 8 o'clock [at night]. We're about eight songs in. Today was basically the final day to go through every single last little note. Then, we're actually printing them to tape--what we'll go and get mastered. We've been here for about eight days. It's the first time we mixed with somebody who didn't produce the record. Our first record, ["A Fever You Can't Sweat Out"], the same guy produced, engineered and mixed it. It's really cool.

Who produced "Pretty. Odd."?

We had this guy we had worked with on one track before. His name is Rob Mathes. He arranged the strings for us when we did a cover of "This is Halloween" when they re-released "Nightmare before Christmas." That's where we met him. He normally gets hired to do orchestrations, different arrangements. He's done different things from, like, opera--Pavarotti--to I think he did string arrangement on one of the Jay-Z songs for that movie "American Gangster." It's a pretty wide spectrum. But, at the same time, he grew up loving Led Zeppelin and classic rock. That's still kind of part of him and a part of music that he loves. He loves a classic rock or pop rock band, whether they're The Beatles or anything. He's always wanted to work with a band in the similar style of George Martin with The Beatles: writing string arrangements and horn arrangements and different things that not a lot of people were doing. It was exactly what we were looking for, and it just kind of ended up being perfect.

Advances weren't available, but I did hear "We're So Starving" on your MySpace page, in which you sing "You don't have to worry, we're still the same band." It's quite a departure, but, then again, it's a logical progression.

That was very well put. Thank you very much. That song, it's the first song on the record. It's kind of an intro track. It's really, probably, lyrically the most basic song on the record for the complete reason of just blatantly being very forward with what we were trying to say. As soon as we got off tour about a year ago, we were all tired and looking forward to having a break, and it was getting close to being off for seven or eight months. We were getting tired of sitting at home. We were writing songs and getting ready to record, but our fans had asked a lot [about] when we were going to have a new record out. For us, we wrote that song in about 45 minutes, me, Jon and Ryan, just being sarcastic in the sense that Jon's got the loudest vocal part when we say the line "We're still the same band." He wasn't in the band the whole time. I guess we're representing where the band is going to stay. We're not going to have anybody different on the next record. We're looking forward to doing exactly what we got to do for the first time over the last two-and-a-half years.

So you're saying this is it. This is the line-up you're sticking with.

Yes, yes, Jon Walker is a full-time member of Panic at the Disco. We didn't know Jon up until about, oh I guess, two years ago. I think it was the first tour we had ever gotten a bus for. We were still playing third or fourth, we weren't headlining yet. We were touring with this band called The Academy Is ... from Chicago. We were good friends with them and he grew up with those guys, and actually played in a different band with one of their guitar players a few years ago. He was teching for them and kind of doing film stuff. We made really good friends with him and kind of found out his story of growing up and being in bands with guys in The Academy, or being friends with the guys in Fall Out Boy. Then we were like, "We were just in the process of [trying] to find somebody." There was never anybody else who had tried out or anything. He was never really officially inducted in the band. It was just kind of like, "Well, you've been hanging out with us a lot, so now you're going to keep hanging out with us even more." [Laughs]

So it was a casual thing?

Yes, I guess that was the best way to put it.

For "Pretty. Odd.," did you change the songwriting process at all?

Well, it is kind of weird. On the last record, I think we probably have three or four different ways that songs would come about: with the lyrics coming first, or a piece of music coming first. With this record, we have a couple songs we wrote, just the four of us in a room for six or seven hours. The first single, "Nine in the Afternoon," is the first song we wrote for the album. That's one of those songs that we just kind of sat down and all wrote together. There's lyrics from everybody on the record, primarily from Ryan and Jon. Brendon now has a few of his own little short ditties that he kind of wrote all the music and lyrics for that are just fun little things. So there's some different stuff. Then there's some of the same stuff. There's some fictional lyrics and some of the same ways we used to write songs.

Did you feel any pressure to follow up the success of "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out"?

Only the personal pressure of just wanting to make a record that we're happy with. We're really picky. We tend to throw away parts a lot. A lot of times, if we write something, a week later, because we've heard it 30 or 40 times by that point, we'd get tired of it and throw it away. So it's kind of hard to find a full album's worth of material that we're all happy with. Listening back, we were talking about how much happier we were with this record than the last one. The last one, we had a lot more limitations, just as far as music goes, especially with budget. [With "Pretty. Odd.,"] we recorded live strings and live horns, and more time in the studio has allowed us to make the songs exactly the way we want people to hear them. We're just really excited to go on tour and play the songs that we've been working on for the last four months.

Why did you decide to sign on to the Honda Civic Tour?

We'd never really worked with a sponsor for a tour before. Or any big sponsor. But Honda approached us for it. They wanted us to do it. They pitched us on it. A big thing for them this year was using a hybrid Civic. They're really promoting the ...green aspect of ... the company. I guess we were really into that just because we're a young band and we're on our second record. We're concentrating on trying to write the best songs as we can. We want to help support and feel strongly about [the green movement], and we want kids to know about it. We didn't know the best way to go about showing that. I actually just watched "The Simpsons Movie" for the first time. The first scene in the movie is with Green Day and they say something about how they played for three-and-a-half hours and now they want to say something about the environment and everyone starts booing. [Honda] already had their foot in the door, promoting that type of philosophy. At the same time, they've been cool with letting us have full creative control with the car we got to design, all the artwork. They haven't really told us what to do on any occasion. They've been a really cool sponsor. That's why we chose to do it with them, other than some random cell phone company.

With the circus theme of your last tour, you set your expectations high for the next tour. What can we expect from this time?

We actually kind of just started talking about that in the last couple weeks, getting different production ideas together. We just love doing that--putting on a show, planning a show. I think of it more as a performance than just a rock 'n' roll concert. Trying to find the balance in between the two is kind of cool. One thing, though, that I guess will be different than the last tour is, the last tour, we were able to have such an elaborate stage show because of the size of the venues we were playing. Not the giant 25,000 seaters, but 8,000 to 10,000 people a night. But, at the same time, you're in an ice hockey arena or you're in the Utah Jazz basketball court, and it's not the greatest place to see a concert if you love the band. For this tour, we wanted to go back to larger theaters. It's a lot cooler place to put on a show, but I guess you have some limitations with size and space. I think we have a few tricks up our sleeve. We have a few good ideas.