“Hard Times”

When they originally formed in 2004, in what seems like an alternate universe from now, Paramore were a rock band. In the late 2000s they produced a kind of emo with enough surface gloss for it to flow seamlessly into the pop charts. Eventually their music started to consume pop, but from unusual angles; their 2014 single “Ain’t it Fun” is built off of a kind of diagonal, funky rhythm that sounds constructed from someone’s memory of a Paula Abdul or Janet Jackson hit, wrought for maximum danceability. After a three year absence, Paramore returned this week, and they’ve reshuffled a bit—subtracting bassist Jeremy Davis and re-adding founding drummer Zac Farro—but they still conduct a consistent fluorescence, feeling at times less like a straightforward rock band than a shifting Rubik’s Cube. For their new single, “Hard Times,” they return to the vintage rhythms that informed “Ain’t it Fun,” but the new song unfolds in a context less obviously connected to rock and even further amputated from emo.

It’s a deliberate simulation of the 1980s—an era of polyglot pop music, where rock would find itself embodied in pop and vice versa. Yet “Hard Times” doesn’t sound like it was exhumed from the past; it renders the ‘80s as if its primary architects were Lindsey Buckingham and Tina Weymouth—Taylor York’s short, spiky guitar phrases carve the song into bright triangles, and Farro’s drums ripple across the frame as if pulled from an Exposé song. Over this ecstatic surface Hayley Williams sings dramatic counterpoint: “All that I want /Is a hole in the ground/You can tell me when it’s all right/For me to come out.” It’s formal depiction of how depression can branch and flower through a terrarium of brightness. Even though Paramore move comfortably in the skin of pop, emo still flows through its nervous system.