Paramore It is one of those bands that has managed to mature with elegance. Their 2013 self-titled album drew a boundary between their more in-your-face sound and the mid-2000s pop-punk scene that once defined them. Instead of relying on those clichés that catapulted them back in the day, they decided to find their place among the musical trends of the moment. It’s somewhat ironic: although millennial nostalgia makes us live in a déjà vu of that batch of bands that embraced the sweeter side of punk (Paramore’s influence on new stars like Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish is undeniable), Paramore he embraced a different kind of musical nostalgia. Inspired by the rock and new wave of the eighties, he arrived “After Laughter”, a record without which we cannot understand this record “This Is Why”.
there where “After Laughter” showed the most colorful and acid side of the band with dyes, “This Is Why” is the other side. Those from Tennessee this time immerse themselves in rock with post-punk influences from the early 2000s, looking with admiration at bands like Bloc Party, Foals or Yeah Yeah Yeahs. With “This Is Why”homonymous theme that opens the album, Paramore build the perfect bridge to go from one stage to another: it instantly takes us to the omnipresent funk of “After Laughter”but it also reminds us of the darker echoes of Hayley Williams’ solo work “Petals Of Armor” (a more experimental facet that we also hear in “Figure 8” o “Crave”). The catchy riffs and his touch of irony are still latent, creating the perfect set to show that Paramore they are still capable of capturing the fears of their generation. If in the early days of Paramore we saw that explosive and fluorescent adolescent rage, it evolves to approach the fears and anxieties of being a grown millennial in a post-pandemic world. In his new songs we see how paranoia, social pressure, lack of empathy or even visits to the physio are now recurring and highly recognizable themes for the same generation that grew up with his songs.
disc to disc, Paramore They are still hungry to broaden horizons. In “Big Man Little Dignity” take a further step forward to experiment with William’s cadences and tone; ‘‘Running Out Of Time” takes up the stop-start formula of its pop punk base to dress it with an imaginative and scathing lyricism, while “It’s like that” contrasts between its more excessive and restrained sound, at times reminiscent of Hard-fi.
When a band goes beyond fifteen years of history, that uncomfortable moment often arrives in which their new songs are the payment to receive the dose of nostalgia that their fans demand live. But Paramore have managed to get to this moment gracefully, a point they have been trying to reach for years. Far from breaking with the past or trying to surpass their greatest hits, the band has opted for a much more intelligent and sustainable path: looking for new tonalities, proving that being an adult in 2023 can give you the same anxiety as when you were a teenager if you try hard enough.