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Paramore Tries to Find Itself in the ’80s on ‘After Laughter’
The last decade has been a hostile time for rock bands, which have lost their centrality to rappers, country stars, D.J.s, internet sensations and more. Even the most important rock bands of the daydon’t much sound like rock. That made the ascent of Paramore from the Warped Tour pop-punk trenches into the mainstream even more remarkable.
On its way to becoming one of the most influential bands of the 2000s, Paramore made the case for pop-punk at arena scale, and the band’s DNA — and especially that of its frontwoman, Hayley Williams, one of the most signature yelpers in mainstream rock — has been heard in musicians across the pop spectrum: Best Coast, Taylor Swift, Grimes, Hey Violet and beyond.
“After Laughter” is Paramore’s fifth album, but more important its first since its self titled 2013 album, the group’s least centered release and the one that all but completely did away with Paramore as it was, beginning with its 2005 debut album. That band was a taut pop-punk missile, and especially on its first two albums, it didn’t stray far from its mission.
On “After Laughter,” Paramore is single-minded again, but not of the same mind as it once was. Ms. Williams and her bandmates, Zac Farro and Taylor York have remade themselves into a 1980s pop-rock outfit: tinny digital percussion, synthesizers and mostly constrained, saccharine singing from Ms. Williams.
One of the shortcomings of mid-period Paramore was the way Ms. Williams was de-emphasized — she is best when allowed to emote largely uncamouflaged, and when her singing veers toward sneers.
Her vocals on this album are closer to that idea than on the last album, but even though her lyrics are as aggrieved as ever — maybe more so — the jubilation of the music works against it. This album suggests, in places, early-80s Blondie (“Rose-Colored Boy”) and the music of John Hughes films (“Forgiveness”), but also recent club-pop revivalists like La Roux and Kiesza (“Told You So”), or attitudinal pop stars like Charli XCX.
Ms. Williams isn’t as signature, or as effective, in this universe. She’s still a strong singer, especially on “Told You So,” but some of her essential grit is lost to the machines. She has impressive moments on the least varnished songs here, like “Tell Me How,” a gloomy and piercing piano ballad (“I can’t call you a stranger/But I can’t call you”). And sometimes she thrives despite musical chaos, like on “Idle Worship,” a sly song about who, and what, we value: “We all got problems don’t we?/We all need heroes don’t we?/But rest assured there’s not a single person here who’s worthy.”
With each album, Paramore became a little bolder and strayed a little further from its comfort ground. “After Laughter” feels like a break with that arc, and not a wholly explicable one. It is an odd choice to release a 1980s revival album just when a 1990s revival is moving to the center to pop culture (a movement this band would be well-suited to) and also to split so definitively with the pop-punk and emo of the band’s past just as those sounds are beginning to thrive again.
Instead, Paramore has removed itself from the narrative, making an album that mostly reveals how fatigued it was with its old idea of itself, and the conversations that came with it. Perhaps the least surprising thing about it is that one of the biggest rock bands of the 2000s isn’t much interested in being a rock band at all.
Paramore Tries to Find Itself in the ’80s on ‘After Laughter’
The last decade has been a hostile time for rock bands, which have lost their centrality to rappers, country stars, D.J.s, internet sensations and more. Even the most important rock bands of the daydon’t much sound like rock. That made the ascent of Paramore from the Warped Tour pop-punk trenches into the mainstream even more remarkable.
On its way to becoming one of the most influential bands of the 2000s, Paramore made the case for pop-punk at arena scale, and the band’s DNA — and especially that of its frontwoman, Hayley Williams, one of the most signature yelpers in mainstream rock — has been heard in musicians across the pop spectrum: Best Coast, Taylor Swift, Grimes, Hey Violet and beyond.
“After Laughter” is Paramore’s fifth album, but more important its first since its self titled 2013 album, the group’s least centered release and the one that all but completely did away with Paramore as it was, beginning with its 2005 debut album. That band was a taut pop-punk missile, and especially on its first two albums, it didn’t stray far from its mission.
On “After Laughter,” Paramore is single-minded again, but not of the same mind as it once was. Ms. Williams and her bandmates, Zac Farro and Taylor York have remade themselves into a 1980s pop-rock outfit: tinny digital percussion, synthesizers and mostly constrained, saccharine singing from Ms. Williams.
One of the shortcomings of mid-period Paramore was the way Ms. Williams was de-emphasized — she is best when allowed to emote largely uncamouflaged, and when her singing veers toward sneers.
Her vocals on this album are closer to that idea than on the last album, but even though her lyrics are as aggrieved as ever — maybe more so — the jubilation of the music works against it. This album suggests, in places, early-80s Blondie (“Rose-Colored Boy”) and the music of John Hughes films (“Forgiveness”), but also recent club-pop revivalists like La Roux and Kiesza (“Told You So”), or attitudinal pop stars like Charli XCX.
Ms. Williams isn’t as signature, or as effective, in this universe. She’s still a strong singer, especially on “Told You So,” but some of her essential grit is lost to the machines. She has impressive moments on the least varnished songs here, like “Tell Me How,” a gloomy and piercing piano ballad (“I can’t call you a stranger/But I can’t call you”). And sometimes she thrives despite musical chaos, like on “Idle Worship,” a sly song about who, and what, we value: “We all got problems don’t we?/We all need heroes don’t we?/But rest assured there’s not a single person here who’s worthy.”
With each album, Paramore became a little bolder and strayed a little further from its comfort ground. “After Laughter” feels like a break with that arc, and not a wholly explicable one. It is an odd choice to release a 1980s revival album just when a 1990s revival is moving to the center to pop culture (a movement this band would be well-suited to) and also to split so definitively with the pop-punk and emo of the band’s past just as those sounds are beginning to thrive again.
Instead, Paramore has removed itself from the narrative, making an album that mostly reveals how fatigued it was with its old idea of itself, and the conversations that came with it. Perhaps the least surprising thing about it is that one of the biggest rock bands of the 2000s isn’t much interested in being a rock band at all.