Paramore - brand new eyes
Record Label: Decaydance
Release Date: September 29, 2009
Unless you were a teenager when Riot! came out, you probably never saw Paramore's rise to fame coming. Back in 2005, they were just another pop-punk band with a cute female singer, putsing around on their separate instruments. While their was some mainstream potential with "Pressure" and "Emergency," the band was, for the most part, outside the mainstream. Fast forward four years, and bands are achieving Paramore 2.0 status. Bands copy Paramore, teenaged girls obsess over them, Billboard coddles their albums and keeps them on the charts for weeks upon weeks, months upon months. Armed with only lowercase letters and butterfly carcasses, Paramore is back with a safe album that will probably sell more than a hundred thousand copies in its first week.
While this album accomplishes nothing groundbreaking, refreshing or new, Paramore seems to have found their niche -- creating comfortable pop-punk. While the musicianship and the vocals have progressed, Hayley seems to be taking the spotlight even more now (who thought that was possible?). Her skills are becoming more broad, and while the musicianship is competent, it's no tour-de-force by any means.
"Misguided Ghosts" is a slower, crestfallen, acoustic song, but I'll certainly be surprised if we've ever hear a subdued Paramore song. "We Are Broken" and "When It Rains" are fairly mellow but Hayley's vocal work on those songs seems too loud to fit. Her soaring vocals seem to be her comfort zone, and the funny thing is that "Misguided Ghosts," where she decides to keep her voice laid back and mellow, seems to work better than half the songs on this album where she croons and where she dominates vocally (soaring pitch still present). With all of this heaping vocal work pressing into your ears, it's quite sad you don't hear the amount of instrumentation that you should. I'm still not sure whether or not to blame this on the production or the musicians themselves.
What truly keeps this album from exceeding it's potential is its generic competence. Paramore seems to have hit average on the head, pegging it as their sound. However, this lack of creativity keeps the album too safe, too boring. It's a guilty pleasure, for lack of a better word. While the band is better than most of their contemporaries, they blend in with the crowd and leave a lot to be desired.
What I don't understand though, is why this review seems to give up halfway? You mention one track from the album... and you mention Misguided Ghosts - a very unusual and experimental song and not the single or one of the more characteristic Paramore songs.
What I don't understand though, is why this review seems to give up halfway? You mention one track from the album... and you mention Misguided Ghosts - a very unusual and experimental song and not the single or one of the more characteristic Paramore songs.
I only mentioned one (the most experimental) because we all know what Paramore can do. That was the only track in my opinion that showed that they can do something more than Misery Business and Decode.
I respect your views on it, but I must disagree. I feel like Paramore is definitely heading in the right direction with this release. I feel like there were elements from their first record and Riot! that were used to fuse something great on this one. While I also feel like this is a safe album for them, I feel at the same time that they will be forcing newer bandwagon fans from Riot! to dig something that isn't nearly as poppy as on the last record.
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