Album Review: Paramore Goes Pop in the Darkly Addictive "After Laughter"

Paramore’s darkly addictive After Laughter is fun music to feel bad to. It may also send diehard fans into an existential spiral, but for different reasons.

Paramore is 15 years old. Its anchor and frontwoman, Hayley Williams, is 28. It feels like they’ve been around forever, and yet, none of its members have even seen 30.

What that means is Paramore and the eight individuals who’ve made up the outfit over the past decade and a half (handily illustrated here) have done a lot of growing up in a very public fashion.

Their reputation is tied to songs written and performed when Williams was just 16 and 17. And long-time listeners, similarly, have tied their teenage memories (and feeeelings) to the band’s earlier emo records.

On After Laughter, their latest, they detour into the realm of the playful and pleasantly melodious, garnering criticism from those same fans, sensing a selling-out.

However, beneath the jangly guitars and ‘80s synth is a new maturity and evolved self-awareness in the song-writing, penned in the wake of massive internal upheaval, which most recently culminated in a lawsuit from founding (and now ex) member Jeremy Davis. After Laughter also sees the return of Zac Farro, one of two brothers who previously quit the band while accusing Williams of not being Christian enough. Only Zac, the drummer, returned, and alongside guitarist Taylor York, Paramore now exists as an efficient three-piece.

Their religious roots are now secondary to the band's obsession with their own implosion, illustrated by Williams’ self-critical (and sometimes taunting) lyrics. It’s less straight-edge, more new wave. Their unexpected left turn towards pop is certain to leave some fans behind. Those who come along for the ride are in for a treat.

The first half of the album makes a point of differentiating this version of the band from everything they’ve been before. Paramore’s updated manifesto is writ large on opener and paradigm-shifting lead single “Hard Times”, which has Hayley Williams sliding down its xylophonic spine to weave a tale of co-dependent anxiety. (“Gonna make you wonder why you even try/ gonna take you down and laugh when you cry.) It’s more chorus than song… but what a chorus. Williams hits the title “Hard Times” on 20 different occasions, and it never gets old.

The bouncy “Rose-Coloured Boy” sounds like an offcut from After Laughter’s spiritual sister, Carly Rae Jepsen’s E-mo-tion. (Its cheerleader-chant, “Low-key, no pressure, just hang with me and my weather,” is particularly irresistible.) On “Forgiveness”, York does some Tears for Fears twiddling and Farro gently keeps the beat as Williams does her best Belinda Carlisle. There was no way to anticipate Paramore’s aptitude for AM easy-listening.

Throughout, the open-wound honesty of Williams keeps on peeking through. The sinister tinge to her lyrics, awash in cheerful sonic flourishes, makes her especially compelling. The early tracks, including second single “Told You So”, spin tales of agitation and depression (if not straight-up personality disorders). Her idiosyncratic vocal readings make the experience a consistently surprising pleasure. On “Fake Happy”, she veers from croaky Jenny Lewis to confident Michael Jackson (with emphatic gasps for punctuation), providing her own chorus of “buh-duh-buh-dahs’ as well. She’s a dynamo.

If older fans can get through Side A’s five-track crucible, they’ll find a familiar Paramore on the back-end of the album. “Grudges” echoes Death Cab for Cutie at their most rollicking, and “Idle Worship” offers Williams’ most familiar and off-kilter performance, running over the edges of each verse with an escalating, panicked howl. “No Friend”, meanwhile, invites mewithoutyou singer Aaron Weiss to recount Paramore’s rocky history with former bandmates, with abstract lyrics and unmistakable intention: “You’re no friend of mine.”

With that one nearly-screamo exception, After Laughter plays exclusively in the synth-pop sandbox, and believe it or not, Williams and company are great at it. (Late track “Caught in the Middle” suggests a capacity for ska too, though maybe that’s one to keep in the back pocket.)

Paramore, despite all odds, have returned as bona fide pop hook-peddlers. For a straight-edge band, that’s a hell of a twist.

4/5

After Laughter is now available.

Photo: Atlantic