STILL INTO YOU

Somehow, when I decided to start doing this series weekly, it didn’t occur to me that between obsessively doing close-listens of a band’s discography over and over, going to work, and my personal life (I officially turned the age where no one likes me last Wednesday), I might not have enough time to listen to music that isn’t, you know, decade-old Hot Topic soundtracks. Luckily, I’m proud to announce that aside from a brief deviation (the new Glitterer album is actually rather good, once you get past the fact that it’s Not Title Fight), I didn’t actually care this week, because Paramore has pretty much never written a bad song.

I’ve been hesitant to write about Paramore with this series, not because of their music (which I’ve always thought was great), but because the entire critical conversation surrounding the band has always seemed a bit toxic, perhaps because Hayley Williams was the only woman in a prominent position in the scene, or perhaps because too much attention was paid to their endless lineup changes, or perhaps because their early work was (in a misogynist and dismissive fashion) often inaccurately compared to Avril Lavigne and Kelly fucking Clarkson, of all people. Paramore wasn’t really given the critical attention they deserved until their 2013 self-titled album, when they began to shift from effervescent, post-hardcore-indebted power-pop to a more “mature” and boundary-pushing pop sound, therefore slotting neatly into the category of the Taylor Swifts of the world– ie, the place that women are supposed to occupy within contemporary pop music, and, moreover, the place where music critics decide it’s okay to engage with their music in an honest way and without condescension. Gross, right?

So, while it may be true that Paramore has indeed steadily improved with each record, it would be fallacious for anyone to argue that their early work is without merit just because it sprouted from a place and time within alternative music that’s often looked at with derision. According to Wikipedia, Hayley Williams is renowned for being able to sing in a “whistle register” (I don’t actually know anything about music, so that sounds like fucking nonsense to me). What she should be renowned for is being one of the most electrifying and charismatic frontpeople to ever set foot on a stage. Music critics often referred to the other musicians in Paramore as “her” band, overlooking the more collaborative aspects of their music, which has been a source of endless frustration for all the members. So let’s peel back the discourse and reveal who Paramore actually are: one of the most versatile and accomplished bands in alternative music, and the one band from the 2000s mall-emo explosion to pull off the segue into pop music with grace and skill.

FRANKLIN

So, one of the biggest arguments levied against Paramore is that they are a manufactured industry plant, because technically Hayley Williams was the only person whose name was on the contract when it was signed, with Atlantic Records’ initial plan being to market her as a solo pop act, along the lines of Avril Lavigne. This line of thinking never addresses two important facts: one, Hayley wasn’t even sixteen when she signed the contract in 2003 (and honestly I think that practice seems rather predatory in retrospect), and she actively fought for the right to make the music she wanted with the rest of the band.

People often forget that the original lineup of Paramore was a bunch of high school friends who gravitated to each other naturally. What’s more is that while the rest of the band members obviously were into the major touchstones of their sound– post-hardcore and emo bands like mewithoutYou, Jimmy Eat World, and Sunny Day Real Estate– Hayley in particular often professed admiration for bands like Underoath, the Chariot, Kid Dynamite, and American Nightmare, betraying her hardcore roots. I often find it interesting that while Hayley herself is functionally straight-edge, she went out of her way to say she doesn’t claim it in an interview with Toby Morse of H2O’s DARE-esque One Life One Chance program, which shows she’s pretty well-versed in the culture.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The story of Paramore starts in 2002, in Franklin, Tennessee, when a fourteen-year-old Hayley Williams moved to town following her parents’ divorce and hit it off with the Farro brothers, Josh and Zac, after meeting them at school. A brief stint auditioning for a funk band led to her meeting Jeremy Davis, and soon enough, a band started to coalesce– the first song they ever wrote as a band, “Conspiracy,” took shape around this time. Zac, only 12 at the time, was a thunderously good drummer, adept at deceptively simple fills and imbuing the band with a propulsive energy; balancing out Zac’s muscular drumming was the surprisingly nuanced guitar work of his older brother Josh, a songwriter who was equally willing to explore the influence of heady, eclectic rock groups like Radiohead and Mew as he was to let loose with roaring screams. And of course, Hayley was the Chemical X to the mixture– growing up on girl groups like the Shangri-Las and the bubbly vocal talents of people like Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong and No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani, her parents were smart enough to give her vocal training from famed coach Brett Manning, and even at her young age, her pipes were a force to be reckoned with; additionally, she was already shaping up to a lyricist more articulate than anyone her age had any right to be. Rounding out the group on bass, there isn’t much to say about Jeremy Davis, as he left the band prior to the recording of their debut record (and in fact his departure would inform much of the lyrical content of said record), but he would eventually return, so more on him later.

Taking a page from Fall Out Boy’s massive playbook of music industry innovations, the band and label decided it would be best for their image to release their first LP on Fueled By Ramen. With Davis being replaced by the crunchy, understated rhythm guitar work of Jason Bynum, and Lucio Rubano and Jeremy Caldwell stepping up to provide studio bass work, the band recorded 2005’s All We Know Is Falling with an already extremely wide rage of influences– the band would cite the fractured metalcore/post-hardcore hybrid of Underoath, the esoteric and hazy space rock of Failure, and the airy pop hooks of the Academy Is… as having a large impact on the sound of the album, as well as admitting to listening to a lot of Slipknot. The result is a record with a much wider array of sonic variance than it’s ever given credit for, from the suspended feedback that forms the bridge of the title track to the ineffably catchy chorus of their first big hit, “Pressure.” The bounce between the laid-back twinkle and intense crunch of “Emergency” would also catapult that song to an early hit status. As an amusing side note, I often hear people accuse Mom Jeans. of ripping off Free Throw’s “Two Beers In” for their track “Death Cup,” but I think that the secret nucleus of both songs lies in the lilting opening melody of “Conspiracy,” which is the closest Paramore would ever get to Midwest emo.

While All We Know Is Falling lacks much of the sheer energy and verve that would define their later work in the world of pop-punk, there’s still a lot to like here, and I would argue that their debut is often unfairly forgotten. There’s plenty of standout moments, from the ultra-anthemic guitar riff that announces “Brighter” to the understated early ballad “Franklin,” and I’d like to assign special importance to “My Heart,” the monstrous closing track, which also features Josh Farro contributing one of his few screaming performances to the band’s ouvre. “Here We Go Again” opens with a thick groove that recalls Hayley’s roots auditioning for funk bands before segueing into one of the dreamier choruses on the record, and Hayley proves that her voice was the most vital and combustible element of the band’s sound from the beginning, guiding the progression of both the subdued “Never Let This Go” and enormous pop-punk standout “Whoa” with her extremely powerful and malleable pipes.

Paramore followed up All We Know Is Falling with extensive touring, especially on the Warped circuit (in 2005 they were weirdly relegated to a female-oriented side stage, which seems tokenizing to me) as well as a 2006 tour-exclusive EP, The Summer Tic. The Summer Tic is interesting because it shows the band exploring more of the heavy side that they indulged with “My Heart” (the screaming makeover given to “Emergency” is especially cool) as well as an excellent cover of Failure’s “Stuck On You” and two of the band’s sharpest originals, “O Star” and “This Circle.” The EP also notably announced the return of Jeremy Davis on bass and one of the first songwriting contributions of future member Taylor York (Taylor had previously contributed to the writing of “Conspiracy”).

Electing to become permanent fixtures on Fueled By Ramen rather than graduating to Atlantic, and after going through another shuffle of touring members, Paramore’s lineup of Hayley, Josh, Zac, and Jeremy entered the studio with mega-producer David Bendeth to record their next album. As inauspicious yet promising as their beginnings seemed to be, all expectations would be blown away.

LET THE FLAMES BEGIN

2007’s Riot! is important for several reasons, but chief among them is that it’s an inexhaustible blast of exuberant power-pop. Of the eleven songs on Riot!, it’s hard to point to any of them as less compelling, less brimming with energy, less melodically inventive than any of the others. “That’s What You Get” and “crushcrushcrush” obviously lead the pack, being hit singles for a reason, but in all honesty, any of these songs could have been hits for the band. Josh Farro said that this record was written with a live response in mind, and it shows in the absolutely massive hooks and choruses that fly all over the place.

Another thing I find interesting about Riot! is that in many ways, Paramore were perfect opposites of their Fueled By Ramen contemporaries. Aside from opener “For A Pessimist, I’m Pretty Optimistic,” Paramore never indulged in the lengthy, tongue-twisting song titles that defined bands like Panic! at the Disco, and rather than fixating on their complicated relationship with their newfound fame like Fall Out Boy, Paramore were content to share victory laps with their fans (“Hallelujah,” despite having been written around the time of All We Know, was first released on Riot! and ultimately has much greater resonance placed here).

Paramore’s unwillingness to engage in exhausting wordplay or bend over backwards to force witticisms is indicative of Williams’s approach to lyrics– direct and to the point, she draws strongly from the Blake Schwarzenbach school of songwriting, taut and evocative (her cover of “Accident Prone” accentuated the similarities for me quite well), although perhaps a bit more accessible and less bitter.

The re-entering of Jeremy Davis to the fold is highlighted by Bendeth’s production, which allows the bass to shine, and shows that Davis was capable of the type of agile melodic counterpoints that Josh’s often nuanced compositions required. Describing songs as straightforward as the set presented on Riot! as nuanced may seem silly, but you simply don’t get hooks this good without having an excellent sense of dynamics and layering. Take “Let the Flames Begin,” for example, which takes a classic soft/loud dynamic and enhances it with excellent melodic layering in both the verse’s guitar noodles and the strong, yet subtle backing guitar melody throughout the chorus.

For his part, Zac had experienced a stratospheric leap in talent from All We Know to Riot!, growing from a highly competent utility player to the essence of Paramore’s groove– it’s hard to imagine a lot of this record’s finer moments without the strength and versatility of his hits, and in particular “Misery Business” (the album’s high-water mark and a massive achievement in performance and composition within the pop-punk genre) relies so heavily on the propulsion he provides.

On the subject of “Misery Business” itself, enough words have been spilled on the internalized misogyny of the lyrics by people far more talented and qualified to dissect it than myself. Given that it’s really the only time that the band ever delved into this sort of lyricism, I think it’s a bit unfair to relentlessly hammer on about it (and redundant, given that Hayley long ago stopped singing the most objectionable of the lyrics and finally retired the song entirely from their live sets last year). Regardless, on a sheer songwriting level, “Misery Business” is impossible to deny– that snaky, rhythmic riff ascends perfectly into the chorus, while Hayley delivers her best vocal performance to that point in the band’s career, careening from high to low with pinpoint precision and control.

Hayley’s vocals are, as always, the most enduring and enjoyable aspect of this album. She is a master of emoting through her vocal work, and elevates already-enjoyable tracks like the bouncy and rollicking “Fences”, the yearning and gorgeous “Miracle,” and trademark softer song/late-album standout “We Are Broken” to classic status with her magnetism and power.

Although in many ways “Misery Business” is probably the best song on Riot!, my personal favorite is the closer, “Born for This.” It’s the most hardcore-informed song on the album– there’s gang vocals all over the place and its built around a line from the hook of Refused’s “Liberation Frequency”– but I think it’s where everything comes together most perfectly. Zac’s drumming is almost robotic in its speed and tightness, Jeremy’s bass work is at its most inventive and memorable, and Josh’s percussive, anthemic guitar work makes the whole song feel like a breathless hurdle. For her part, Hayley treats the song like a circus for which she’s the ringleader, commanding every inch of space and turning an already stellar closer into one of the band’s most timeless songs and a consistent live staple. “Everybody sing like it’s the last song you will ever sing,” indeed. Bonus points for the clever lyrical throwback to “Pressure,” highlighting Paramore’s continuous chronicling of their own rise. Again, unlike Fall Out Boy’s often pained contortions and struggles with their own success, Paramore never seemed anything other than overjoyed to have found fame and a stable income doing what they loved, and it shows in the wide-eyed innocence and optimism that both defines Riot! and contributes to its position as a modern pop classic.

You can see that same not-quite-naïveté in full effect throughout their documented live performances during this period. Paramore was (and is) an extremely tight live band, with Hayley at peak control of both the crowd and her voice on the performances captured on their 2008 live album, The Final Riot. A special nod should go out to the band’s performance of “Decoy,” a song that was pretty much only available on the Hot Topic-exclusive Riot! CD and probably didn’t need to be played live, but was given the all-out committed performance it deserved anyway. Paramore have an odd habit of sidelining perfectly good songs as random bonus tracks for certain albums or as soundtrack-only songs– “Temporary,” “Rewind,” and “Stop This Song” all suffered from this fate, being spread out among several random reissues of Riot!, and relegated two of their soon-to-be most popular songs (the Evanescence-tinged down-tempo slog “Decode” and the slow-building but layered and excellent “I Caught Myself”) to the Twilight soundtrack. No accounting for taste, I suppose.

Unfortunately for Paramore (but fortunately for us), that happy-go-lucky attitude was soon obliterated– internal struggles within the band resulting from miscommunication, the pressure to write a successful follow-up, and Hayley deciding to write lyrics about things she was still actively struggling with rather than writing feel-good anthems about problems she had already overcome all contributed to the fractious and aggressive sound on their third record, 2009’s brand new eyes. However, that anger and desperation, coupled with the overdue addition of longtime friend of the band and touring guitarist Taylor York as a contributing songwriter and official rhythm guitarist, came together to create Paramore’s most assured and compelling record to date.

WHERE THE LINES OVERLAP

The years between Riot! and brand new eyes saw a lot of expansion on Hayley’s part– she contributed a solo song to the Jennifer‘s Body soundtrack (the adorable acoustic shuffle “Teenagers”) and appeared as a scene-stealing guest vocalist on tracks as diverse as “The Church Channel” by Say Anything, “Then Came to Kill” by the Chariot (!), and my personal favorite, “The Few That Remain” by Set Your Goals (a band that Hayley named one of her newer favorites along with fellow sadboi pop-punk pioneers Fireworks in 2008). Despite all this building of her personal brand, and a brief worry that Paramore were on the verge of breaking up, the unit stayed strong and the mostly self-produced (with eventual oversight from Green Day’s go-to producer Rob Cavallo) brand new eyes was released in late 2009 to overwhelmingly positive commercial response.

Somehow, Zac Farro has again just leveled up massively as a drummer. I don’t know if it’s the production or what, but he seriously sounds better and better with every record, each new fill sounding more agile, hard-hitting, and precise. Jeremy’s bass work is also more intricate and ostentatious than Riot!. Josh Farro and Taylor York, having broken in their chemistry on past Paramore tours, sound like they were born to play in tandem on brand new eyes, locking in as one unit and lending the record a brawny muscle that I don’t think it would have otherwise had. Really, everything on brand new eyes feels like a more accomplished extension of Riot! except that rather than an overwhelming feeling of positivity reigning over the proceedings, it’s an overwhelming sense of anger and cynicism. This is Paramore’s Big Angry Rock Record, and it’s fucking excellent.

Hayley announces that sense of resentment with the one-two punch of openers “Careful” and “Ignorance” (the sarcastic way that “It’s nice to meet you, sir” seethes out of Hayley on the latter is perhaps the most pissed off I’ve ever heard her on record). Again, the intelligence of her lyrics is stunning (she was twenty-one on this record! Unreal!). “Playing God” may be calmer musically than the first two tracks, but with its “Next time you point the finger, I’ll point you to the mirror” refrain, it’s just as bitter towards self-righteous, judgmental pricks as the rest of the album, and it’s immediately followed by what is probably my favorite song on the album, “Brick By Boring Brick.” Musically, “Brick” is one of the more classically pop-punk songs on the record, but it has that indescribably more aggressive post-hardcore edge that permeates all of the proceedings, and that recurring “ba-da-ba-ba” motif is so perfect– I’m a sucker for that shit, but the way that it continually builds up until the monstrous climax of the song is just icing on the cake. “Feeling Sorry” is another of the more pissed off cuts from this record, with Hayley outright declaring that she feels “no sympathy” and the palm-muted verses conveying that same disdain and fury.

Still, the record is more than just angry all the way through. “Turn It Off” revels in depression with its “I’m better off when I hit the bottom” messaging, while the mega-hit “The Only Exception” is a sticky-sweet love song of the highest caliber (side note, I’ve heard this song described as “country-esque,” which couldn’t be more off to me– it’s acoustic-based power pop, no twang to be found). Elsewhere, the suitably peppy “Looking Up” is as undeniable a love letter to their success as they’ve ever written (“It’s not a dream anymore/it’s worth fighting for” and “god knows the world doesn’t need another band”), and “Where the Lines Overlap” is an olive branch to all their fans, not only admitting that “no one is as lucky as us” but somehow topping the plea to sing along from “Born for This” with its absolutely enormous and unbelievably infectious “I’ve got a feeling if I sing this loud enough/You would sing it back to me” bridge just begging to be shouted at the top of your lungs. There’s also still lots of interesting musical ideas in these tracks– for example, “Looking Up” has a straight-up two-step part, and the penultimate song “Misguided Ghosts” is an extremely haunting and eerie acoustic number.

And of course, it’s not a Paramore album without a crushing, stellar closer, and this album pays off big-time with “All I Wanted.” Not only does it build up to the heaviest and most overbearing guitar work in all of Josh Farro’s time with the band, but it might actually be my favorite vocal performance of Hayley’s; she pushes her voice into the highest register that the song could stand with such emotion, strength, and grace, that it’s hard not to get actual chills when I listen.

Of course, brand new eyes being the absolute peak of Paramore’s involvement in the pop-punk genre, something had to break. And break it did.

GROW UP

Amidst another flurry of solo Hayley appearances (B.o.B.’s “Airplanes,” anyone?), there was some sort of shudder sent through the band. I don’t really care to speculate, nor to take sides; whether there was some sort of financial disagreement, the press was focusing too much on Hayley, or Hayley simply wasn’t “Christian” enough for the Farro brothers has no bearing on my opinion of the band’s work. All I know is that Josh and Zac left, leaving Hayley, Taylor, and Jeremy to continue on as a three-piece (although Ilan Rubin did an excellent job with the drums on their next record). In the four years between brand new eyes and Paramore, the band only released the kind of subpar “Monsters” (their contribution to a Transformers soundtrack), as well as a few flurries of singles that were later released as The Singles Club, and the excellent B-sides “Escape Route” and “Native Tongue.” However, slowed output be damned, Paramore rolled up their sleeves and, with Hayley and Taylor becoming a songwriting duo par excellence, forged an entirely new path with 2013’s Paramore.

2013 is an extremely pivotal year for this column. I point to it as the year that the mainstream “emo” explosion finally morphed into nü-pop (my name for the borderline-undefinable pantheon of sadness-tinged and genre-malleable pop artists that have proliferated since then). 2013 is the year that you could argue this strain of emo-derived mainstream alternative rock died: Panic! at the Disco and Fall Out Boy both pivoted to a more straightforwardly “pop” sensibility (becoming garish and ugly in the process); My Chemical Romance, objectively the biggest stars of that scene, broke up; and many other bands faded into the background, to be replaced by newer, more electronic-focused artists like Twenty One Pilots (their breakthrough album Vessel was released that year). These were artists that echoed many of the sentiments of those earlier bands, and appealed to a similar demographic, but ultimately hold roots in something much different. It’s no surprise that 2013 is also the year that “emo rap” started to spread its wings– Bones released the formative single “Air” and Adam McIlwee officially left Tigers Jaw in order to focus on Wicca Phase Springs Eternal. There was a new dichotomy forming, one that would eventually be the catalyst for millions of “Is Lil Peep emo?” arguments on Reddit, but in 2013, Paramore were smack in the middle.

As I lamented earlier, it was bittersweet to see Paramore ranking so highly at publications like The AV Club. On the one hand, it was so vindicating to see them finally taken seriously, and this album deserved all the praise it was getting. On the other, I felt like, “Shit, it took y’all this long to catch up to a train that thirteen-year-old girls were on years ago? I thought you were hip!”

Nevertheless, Paramore is a stunning achievement. 64 minutes long and completely absent of filler or dead air, it shows the pop-punk of the past melting into the thrilling new pop sounds of the future. Jeremy’s driving, disgustingly thick bass tone forms the foundation of the album as Hayley and Taylor go absolutely nuts. “Fast In My Car” announces the proceedings with a fuzzy, almost garage-like riff which belies the song’s slight synth-pop edge and shows off both a succinct, hard-hitting chorus from Hayley and Taylor’s knack for bizarre, bracing guitar noise. I will say I miss Zac’s thunderous strength on the drums for this record (and it’s a shame that Aaron Gillespie wasn’t immediately on hand for the recording), but the production fills out Ilan Rubin’s sound to the point where it’s much less noticeable than it should be.

If “Fast In My Car” didn’t communicate that we were in for something completely different, “Now” should fix that. Hayley’s “Now-ow-ow-ow-ow” hook somewhat recalls the way that Katy Perry breaks up syllables on her hooks, but the atmosphere is ultimately more organic and desperate than any other contemporary pop record of the time (the way the rolling drums coincide with that morbid “There’s a time and a place to die” refrain makes that much clear). “Now” is also followed by “Grow Up,” perhaps the most bitter kiss-off to the Farros on a record full of them (“If I have to, I’m gonna leave you behind”). The foreboding synth fadeout that closes the song is one of the record’s most memorable and sonically prescient moments.

Hayley name-checked Blondie and Siouxsie & the Banshees as primary influences on this record and it shows, both in the record’s obvious pop eclecticism (Blondie) and the way its tone dances swiftly between playful and uncomfortably dark (Siouxsie). However, “Daydreaming” reminds me of a quite different peer of those previously mentioned artists– the Cure. With its creeping synth, ambitiously layered guitar pop, Hayley’s achingly vulnerable voice, and a chorus somehow subdued and transcendent and propulsive all at once, I could see “Daydreaming” slotting onto Head On the Door or Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me with little-to-no fiddling. If you can’t tell, it’s one of my favorites on the record.

Resting between two of the best songs on the album, “Daydreaming” and “Ain’t It Fun,” is the first of three lo-fi ukulele-driven interludes on the album, “Moving On.” In a lesser singer’s hands, these tracks would probably be superfluous, but Hayley’s vocals serve to make these cutesy digressions somehow sound completely integral to the album’s flow. And besides, after the dreamy heaviness of “Daydreaming,” I needed a moment of respite before the sheer pop euphoria of “Ain’t It Fun,” one of the best songs the band has ever crafted. If you told me in 2007 that Paramore would eventually write an irrepressibly joyful pop-rock gem that seamlessly incorporates both a xylophone and a six-piece gospel choir, I doubt I would have believed you, but rest assured, I’m so happy they did. PS– peep the funk-influenced bass during the outro. There’d later be disputes about how much Jeremy Davis actually contributed to this album, but that moment at least deserves, like, thirty bucks. It’s such an innocuous and small moment, but so danceable and a perfect little accent to a perfect little song.

Seemingly worried about alienating past fans, Paramore melded the sounds of brand new eyes and Paramore with “Part II,” a song with such a dark and driving chorus that it almost belies the airy, ambient bridge. Said bridge eventually collapses in on itself with reckless abandon. It’s the first moment on this record where Paramore pull off a neat trick. By playing with tone and atmosphere, they can make moments that aren’t actually all that heavy sound downright menacing and oppressive. I think “Part II” also features one of Taylor York’s absolute best moments as a guitarist, proving you don’t need to shred in order to be a master of your instrument.

Paramore returns unapologetically to their new sound on “Last Hope,” one of the more yearning and beautiful moments on an already yearning and beautiful record. Jeremy again provides an extremely memorable and fun bass line, while Hayley delivers some of the most honest and open lyrics of her career. She’d later expand on her mental health in this essay, but I’ll be damned if “Every night I try my best to dream tomorrow makes it better/And wake up to the cold reality and not a thing is changed” isn’t as succinct and poignant a summary of depression as has ever been written. Accordingly, her performance on this song is more subtle, running on a level just below completely letting loose.

Hayley’s decade-long, friction-filled relationship with New Found Glory’s guitarist Chad Gilbert would provide lots of darker and sadder material on this record’s follow-up, and was also the fuel for previous love songs like the gooey-yet-wonderful “The Only Exception,” but I’d argue that the best song to come from that relationship is the buoyant, irrepressible “Still Into You.” For all my cooing over Hayley’s hardcore roots, and my love of the moments where Paramore lean into aggression, I will always come back to immaculately-constructed pop songs like “Still Into You.” Plus, it’s got another absolutely spine-chilling performance from Hayley at the end of the bridge.

“Anklebiters” fakes us out with a feedback-drenched, ominous drum-driven intro before revealing itself to be an extremely jaunty pop song, albeit the fastest-paced and closest to aggro one on this record (peep the gang vocals when Hayley shouts the name of the song). Surprise, surprise, Jeremy’s bass line is again perfect, perfectly contrasting the shimmering, sparkly cascades of guitar that Taylor pours all over the song. Ilan’s drumming is excellent as well, showing that he was doubtlessly a solid utility player.

Another ukulele interlude, “Holiday,” adds both a fun bass counterpoint and Hayley admitting to eating Top Ramen in order to save money. Inessential in theory, essential in practice, as it provides reprieve between the caffeinated energy of “Anklebiters” and “Proof.” “Proof” was one of the first songs written for this album, and it straddles the line between brand new eyes and Paramore effortlessly, with Taylor providing some joyous guitar accents to the sticky-as-fuck chorus. Yet again, I’m left thinking that Jeremy Davis is one of the most perennially underrated bassists of this scene. Yet again, we roll into the next song before I can even blink.

“Hate to See Your Heart Break” is uncharacteristically reserved for Paramore, even considering their trademark softer songs. “Hate” is tender and precious, with a gentle orchestral touch that emphasizes the maximalism of the record as a whole. With many bands of Paramore’s genre, there’s a tendency to draw back from sounds they couldn’t necessarily recreate live, but “Hate” benefits from the accoutrements of gracious studio time and a major label budget, swelling and fading with all the grace of a perfectly-scored movie. And again, Taylor’s understated and tasteful guitar work ends up stealing the show for me at the end of the track, despite Hayley competing for my attention with a performance that exudes both empathy and exhaustion.

If “Hate to See Your Heart Break” is a study in how minimalism and maximalism can collide to thrilling effect, “(One of Those) Crazy Girls” flips the polarity, as here the orchestral elements (and a toweringly melodic solo from Taylor) fills the song to overflowing, while also allowing ample space to focus on Hayley’s lyrics, somehow both earnest and satirical. I actually find these lyrics to be the most compelling on the record, as Hayley draws an evincing and affecting sketch of how love can feed our most unhinged impulses, without ever succumbing to scorn or sacrificing her inherent likability.

That same likability turns the final interlude, “I’m Not Angry Anymore,” from sparse and forgettable to perhaps the most memorable one of the entire record. Again, Hayley reminds me of Blake Schwarzenbach on this track, at first studying obvious contrasts (“I’m not angry anymore/Well, sometimes I am/I don’t think badly of you/Well, sometimes I do”) before hitting us with an exceedingly witty turn of phrase (“I’ll rot your teeth down to the core if I’m really happy”) and giving the theme of the record adequate closure (“I’m not totally angry/I’m not all that angry anymore”), all within less than a minute.

The final ten minutes of the record, rather than functioning as a climax, are more of an epilogue of sorts. “Be Alone” is the most straight-up pop-punk song on the album, yet it evokes both resignation and satisfaction, two themes that couldn’t be farther from pop-punk’s raison d’etre. “You should be alone with me” is probably the most accurate portrayal of a long-term relationship that I’ve found, where alone time often means cuddling with your partner after a long day of socializing and needing to recharge.

Paramore‘s closing track, “Future,” is frankly a stunning achievement. Starting as an ethereally uplifting soft-pop gem, the song betrays that Failure influence the band talked about so much in their earlier days with an extended, borderline-shoegaze climax, complete with a false fade, that might be the most crushing finale they’ve recorded throughout their history of crushing finales. Extra credit goes to Ilan Rubin, who absolutely shatters the room with his whirlwind drum performance (Aaron Gillespie of Underoath/The Almost proved to be an enormously capable touring drummer, and he absolutely destroys this track live), as well as Jeremy for providing a heavy-as-all-fuck bass riff and Taylor for wreaking havoc with a high-pitched, haunting vibrato effect on his guitar. It’s interesting that Hayley herself takes a backseat on the final moment of what might be the definitive Paramore record, communicating that Paramore is a band, not a person.

HARD TIMES

Of course, yet another lineup change occurred during the four-year gap between Paramore and 2017’s After Laughter. Jeremy Davis left the band, some hurtful words were exchanged, and of all people, Zac Farro returned to provide drums for the next Paramore album. Healed grudges (and Zac’s excellent drumming chops back on display) aside, After Laughter completes a transition that Paramore could have only hinted at. Nü-pop is passe– it’s all about new wave and 80s avant-pop, a la Talking Heads.

I’ll cut right to the chase– “Hard Times” was my most-played song of 2017, and After Laughter tied with Converge’s The Dusk In Us for my favorite album of that year. While Paramore boasts some truly soaring heights and a startling consistency, After Laughter prevails as my favorite Paramore album thanks to Hayley’s most vulnerable lyrics yet (these songs, I suspect, will ring as true in 10 years as they did at the time of After Laughter‘s release) and the unstoppable chemistry between Taylor’s most innovative songwriting yet and Zac’s pinpoint-precision drumming. “Hard Times” is patient zero for this synthesis. When I first heard this song, I couldn’t believe that Paramore had written a song so clearly indebted to disco, nor that I was head-over-heels in love with it. “Hard Times” speaks to an extremely specific strain of self-destructive tendencies, one that is so specific as to wrap around to universal. Also, it’s unreal catchy.

“Rose-Colored Boy” is a pretty naked confrontation between Hayley and her relationship with Chad Gilbert (the two had divorced before the release of After Laughter). While the relationship between the two, Chadball being seven or eight years Hayley’s senior, was always on-off and seemingly filled with tension, its collapse fuels some of the most intimate moments on this record (Chad’s lyrics about the breakup, found on New Found Glory’s Makes Me Sick, are no less introspective but perhaps a bit more gross). Together with “Told You So,” “Rose-Colored Boy” forms a duology of profoundly catchy and heart-on-sleeve world music-indebted pop singles. “Told You So” in particular is more bitter than its infectious melody lets on, with its “They love to say they told me so” line feeling like Hayley pulling a long-overdue knife out of her own back.

There’s a study of contrasting feelings throughout After Laughter, whether it’s Hayley lamenting her inability to give Chad the closure that they both want in “Forgiveness” or the way that “Grudges” is both a sweet reflection on the mending of the bridge between Hayley, Taylor, and Zac, and a chronicling of the worst downs of their relationship. And of course, two of the album’s biggest highlights, “Fake Happy” and “Idle Worship,” are meditations on the conflict between an artist’s external image and internal turmoil, the former being directed inward and the latter directed outward.

“Fake Happy” might be the peak of this record’s powers, a pitch-perfect concoction that fuses their newfound new wave flair with the pop-punk predilections of their past, a massive, tough-yet-sensitive chorus somehow finding time and space to coexist with a shattered and unguarded acoustic intro. It’s fitting that it’s immediately followed by “26,” a gentle acoustic song that slowly layers in strings before washing over the listener with Hayley’s gorgeous “ooh-oohs” and a message that seems to be directed as much at herself as it is her fans: “Hold onto hope if you got it/Don’t let it go for nobody.”

“Pool” opens up the second half of the record with an off-kilter, almost claustrophobic groove that develops into an aqueous, glittery chorus that’s both the bounciest and most dreamy on the record. Hayley delves into more breathy intonation for this record, rarely letting loose as she has in the past, but it fits this record’s dark and resigned lyrical atmosphere perfectly. It’s frankly impressive as all hell that Taylor is so in sync with Hayley’s lyrical ambitions while also pushing to the farthest corners of pop music. The wonky intro to “Grudges” is perfectly emblematic of this dichotomy, as it bursts into a keyboard-inflected chorus that recalls the finest moments of a band like Crying. “Grudges” also utilizes Zac’s drumming talents perfectly– his little shuffle in the pre-chorus and bridge is tasteful, danceable and galvanic all at once. Zac also harmonizes with Hayley on this track, a rather sweet touch.

“Caught In the Middle” is almost ska-like in its staid, rhythmic drive, although Hayley steadily gets more frayed and frenetic with each repetition of the chorus. Taylor’s guitar fills during the second verse also serve to fill out the soundscape nicely. Zac continues to amaze with his ability to be both lively and reserved simultaneously, while Hayley’s desperate, almost lilting refrain of “I don’t need no help/I can sabotage me by myself” is the magic ingredient that completes the song’s central conceit.

“Idle Worship,” musically, is discomfiting and exciting. This is Hayley’s most unhinged vocal performance on the record– “Rest assured there’s not a single person here who’s worthy” is belted out with all the rage and sadness of someone who’s completely convinced of its truth. It’s also one of the catchiest songs on the record, Taylor’s guitar interplaying beautifully with the bass work of ever-helpful producer Justin Mendel-Johnsen (who also helmed their last record).

Penultimate track “No Friend” is often singled out as a low point on the record, but I’m a huge fan of its creepy atmosphere as well as the almost-buried, unsettling guest vocals from mewithoutYou’s Aaron Weiss (returning the favor after Hayley, a longtime fan of the band, guested on a few mwY tracks). It steadily builds tension throughout its scant three-and-a-half-minute runtime, Zac’s drumming expertly providing much of the atmosphere while Taylor layers soft, post-hardcore-indebted guitar work over the proceedings. Hearing Aaron work himself up to the point of screaming “You’re no friend of mine!” is actually rather thrilling in the context of such an out-and-out pop record, and its relative quietude serves as a reprieve between the emotional distress of both “Idle Worship” and “Tell Me How.”

“Tell Me How” is a heartbreaking, piano-driven track that functions as a study of Paramore’s relationship with Jeremy Davis. Neither forgiveness nor condemnation, it’s a perfect note to end After Laughter on, as it’s been an album entirely about confronting uncomfortable feelings and expelling personal demons. I feel extremely comfortable saying that After Laughter is my favorite Paramore album thus far, and I’m excited to see the direction they take when they return to music.

FUTURE

Return to music, you ask? Why, yes, Paramore is currently on hiatus. I don’t believe that they’re going to break up, or at least, I pray that they won’t, based on the strength of their last decade-plus of releases. Hayley and Taylor have established themselves as the post-pop-punk equivalent of Lennon and McCartney, or rather, Hoppus and DeLonge; untouchable songwriters working perfectly in tandem with each other to continue pushing their chosen genre forward.

Hayley’s still a hardcore kid (her favorite bands are Turnstile and Inside Out), she still kills guest spots (“Uncomfortably Numb” is the best American Football song and I’ll probably die on this hill), she still shouts out up-and-coming artists like Pool Kids on Twitter, she’s unfailingly nice to everyone who talks to her (my friend shared a story about meeting her at a hardcore show and her being complimentary towards someone’s hair), and she still is a classic case study of a musician whose charisma and talent will always buoy them above the critics. Though the misogyny of the kids who mocked me for listening to a band that made songs for Twilight (and thus, of course, made music for preteen girls– why do young girls deserve to be hated and dismissed? Who knows?) may have faded, Paramore still reigns supreme.

I’m reminded of Jenn Pelly’s excellent piece on Hayley for NPR, where she notes the influence Paramore has had on newer torchbearers for emo in 2019, especially women. She quotes emo-rap wunderkind Princess Nokia on the way that Hayley Williams impacted her growing up:

Before the New York City-born-and-bred rapper Princess Nokia played “Misery Business” on a recent Beats1 show dedicated to the pop-punk of her youth, she gave the song, and Williams, an introduction that was especially emotional, as the tone of her voice grew awed and teary. “Girl, you changed my life, girl!” Nokia said of Williams, recounting Paramore’s 2010 Bamboozle set and how this band of Tennessee teens took over the music industry, becoming a soundtrack to so many beginnings. Nokia herself brought a missing perspective to the boy’s-club of emo rap with her recent mixtape A Girl Cried Red.

On Beats1, Nokia unspooled her praise with total rapture: “You came out and you changed everything, girl!” Nokia went on. “You like four feet tall and you got a voice that come from the Baptist church of the South — where you from girl, Tennessee? You definitely from Tennessee, girl! I know you was raised in that church, Miss Honey, Miss Hayley Williams…”

“We gonna have to take a moment and just live for Miss Hayley Williams,” Nokia effused. “‘Cause she really did that.”

Am I embarrassed to be a Paramore fan? Fuck you for bothering to ask that question.

NEXT WEEK: I might have glossed over Paramore’s Christianity here, but we’re going full Christcore for the next entry– Underoath (also known as Underøath or underOATH, depending on what level of tryhard you’re on).