Carden acknowledges Fall Out Boy’s mainstream breakthrough last year as a primary catalyst and delivers familiar bromides about how he and Beckett didn’t form the band to sell CDs, even though it makes for a pretty sweet bonus. In other ways, though, he seems much older and more jaded than you’d expect. When talk turns to the choice between signing to a major label and sticking with an indie, he gets passionate in explaining how indie labels are gradually chipping away at the majors’ monopoly on power and influence. (He’s right: whereas overall CD sales declined in 2005, indie labels saw a surge in units moved.) Then he complains about bands who go blue in the face justifying their decision to sign to a major — bands he refers to as “bitches who don’t sell as many records as we do.”

Panic drummer Smith flexes a similar set of contradictions. Like lots of guys in indie bands, he blames the record industry’s current woes on the quality of the acts major labels sign. “Ninety percent of the music being pushed by major labels is not good. Maybe that’s one reason why music is not selling like it did 30 years ago. Who was on top 30 years ago? The Who, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin. Who do we have now? Paul Wall?” Yet more than the Who or Pink Floyd, it’s Wall, the Houston MC eager to show off his platinum grill for anyone with a camera, whom Smith echoes in his detailed enumeration of Panic’s SoundScan numbers. That kind of unit counting may be common in the realm of hip-hop, but young rockers like Smith are quickly catching up.

And that’s no crime. The evolution of MySpace and the Internet, along with on-line stores like iTunes, has democratized the music industry by giving consumers equal access to indie and major-label product. As Wentz says via e-mail, he started up Decaydance as an excuse to give other people the chance to hear what he heard in the two songs Panic! At the Disco sent to his on-line LiveJournal. When a platinum artist like Wentz is pulling the string, it can’t help beg the question as to whether Panic! At the Disco are “making it” on their own terms — and even what kind of indie label Decaydance is. Can you rage against the machine if you’re building a slightly smaller version of that same machine in your garage?

Not that Wentz or his Panic pals are likely to care one whit about needling questions lodged by some player-hating journalist. “Just for the record,” Urie sings in a clever music-hall interlude in Panic’s “London Beckoned,” “the weather today is slightly sarcastic with a good chance of (a) indifference or (b) disinterest in what the critics say.” A backlash-baiting fuck-you anthem on a debut album? We’ve come long a way, baby.

Panic! At the Disco + The Academy Is . . . + Hellogoodbye + Acceptance | Avalon, 15 Lansdowne St, Boston | Feb 4 | 617.228.6000 | Lupo’s at the Strand, 79 Washington St, Providence | Feb 7 | 617.931.2000

___

On the Web:

The Academy Is: //theacademyis.com/
Panic! at the Disco: //www.panicatthedisco.com/