Hayley Williams knows how to play the part of the jolly conqueror. Even while singing of anger, betrayal, and disappointment on ever-bigger stages and in technicolor videos throughout the last 13 years, the Paramore leader has projected a pro’s poise along with a child star’s desire to please. Since she was a young teen, Williams has led angsty pop-punk singalongs with the friendly authority of a summer camp counselor. She has bounced around. She has smiled. She has been in complete control. But in the recent video for “Hard Times,” the first single from her band’s fifth album, things are a bit off.

The clip begins with Williams climbing out of a car that’s crashed onto a stage set decorated with cotton-ball clouds, wearing an unsure look: How did I get here? Soon enough, a microphone is put in front of her, and she starts to sing and dance to a bright new-wave bop. But all is not quite right. When she flashes her teeth here, it looks more like a rictus of madness than a sign of genuine pleasure, a wary smile from the rock’n’roll ride Williams has gone through.

Paramore have had enough tabloid-baiting personnel switches to warrant one of those color-coded timelines on the band’s Wikipedia page—because the truth is as long as they have existed, there have been whispers about Williams breaking away as a solo star. Though past members of the Nashville group have quit, whining about their second-fiddle status, you could argue that, by sticking to the idea of being in a rock band with her best friends—not exactly the most au courant concept in an era of ProTools pop—it’s Williams who has made the biggest sacrifice. So, after years of merrily keeping the Paramore lights on, the 28-year-old singer and lyricist considers her life and lets go of her grin on After Laughter.

Which all seems like an immense bummer. But just as this album highlights Williams’ most existentially despondent musings to date, it is also the most fizzy record Paramore have ever recorded. This extreme yin-yang quality is somewhat new for them. When former guitarist Josh Farro was leading the musical charge for their first three albums, his ominous, distorted anthems propelled Williams’ angst as she screamed into the void like a heavy-metal hellion, albeit one informed by a pious Christian faith; on 2009’s Brand New Eyes, which chronicled Farro and Williams’ real-life breakup, the instrumentation and the vocals each fought to tell their side, making for a glorious explosion. After Farro’s departure, guitarist Taylor York took over the musical heavy lifting on 2013’s Paramore, on which the group searched for a new identity, touching on post-rock bombast, string-laden balladry, and the funk-pop of their biggest hit yet, “Ain’t It Fun.” Since then, longtime bassist Jeremy Davis left amid a dispute over songwriting credits (he and the group recently settled a lawsuit) while former drummer Zac Farro, Josh’s brother, returns after six years. All these comings and goings might seem trivial in relation to Williams’ supernova star power, but the drama has always fueled her songwriting, as well as the band’s sound, to an outsized degree.

On After Laughter, York focuses his inspirations the styles of 1980s rock and pop, conjuring a slicked-back take on fixtures like Talking Heads, Paul Simon, and the Bangles. The current members of Paramore barely lived through the ’80s, and for them the decade represents something of an idyll—a time of neon colors and easy rhythms and feel-good fables like The Goonies. Instead of going to war with Williams’ words, the music acts as a gleaming counterpoint, a nostalgic lifeline from one friend to another. On “Forgiveness,” Williams doesn’t offer any, but the song’s lilting Graceland guitars hint at the possibility of a reprieve in the future; “Pool” finds Williams drowning under a wave while the track’s jangling sparkle pulls her above the surface. Music meets message more directly on album highlight “Grudges,” where Williams details her reunion with drummer Zac. “Are you recounting all my faults and are you racking your brain just to find them all,” she sings, peeling apart the fissures of friendship. “Could it be that I’ve changed—or did you?” At this, someone yells “woo!”—or maybe “whew!”—and the whole band tumbles into the chorus.

When the zipped-up hooks falter, though, Williams can seem gauche, especially for someone approaching 30. “Fake Happy” and “Caught in the Middle” come off like the basic complaints of a high schooler, and the maudlin “26” feels indulgent, a teary twinkle that wouldn’t feel out-of-place in a Disney cartoon. Much more intriguing are the album’s final three songs, where Paramore deal with their past and their role as modern idols in surprising ways.

Though After Laughter generally sees Williams exploring the softer nuances of her voice, “Idle Worship” has her seething and spitting as she rejects the heroism that’s so often projected onto her: “You’re wasting all your faith on me.” The song turns Biblical notions of false idolatry, along with radical fear and vulnerability, into a hook built to be sung by thousands of wide-eyed, hair-dyed followers. Meanwhile, “No Friend” is the weirdest thing to ever show up on a Paramore album. Sung by quavering emo intellectual Aaron Weiss of mewithoutYou over a queasy, cyclical riff, it essentially tells the story of Paramore in language that’s dense, referential, and almost shockingly honest, culminating in lines that seem to suggest the band’s craven core: “So let’s make one point crystal clear,” Weiss explains, “You see a flood-lit form, I see a T-shirt design/I’m no savior of yours and you’re no friend of mine.” Once again, this is Paramore dressing themselves down, calling their own motivations into question and exposing their darkest sides. The fact that Weiss’ voice is mixed low enough to be largely unintelligible tempers the song’s startling truth, and feels like something of a cop-out. Then again, this strange song’s inclusion doubles as its own bold statement.

The album ends with “Tell Me How,” which doesn’t sound like anything else here, or in the band’s catalog. With its cascading piano chords, vaguely tropical pulse, and warily confessional words, it could be a standout from one of Drake’s recent releases. It’s sleek, modern, and grown-up. Williams’ hurt here is well-worn, it’s the hurt of regret, of mistakes, of the unending task of moving on. There are no easy answers, no scapegoats. Instead of railing against someone who’s let her down, she responds with shrugging grace: “Tell me how to feel about you now/Oh, let me know.” Williams is not all-powerful, and she’s no longer trying to be.