Lyrically, Paramore doesn’t offer anything hefty to write home about. It doesn’t work, and it insults an audience by supposing that listeners are too dumb to sort their own way through an LP’s intricacies. It’s easy to imagine a Fueled by Ramen exec pulling his hair out at a lack of musical cohesion on the album and demanding some interludes to cluster sets of songs-loosely-by theme. The interludes: oh the interludes, the three album-halting, brief displays of ukulele-laden “quirky,” just playing around, anything-can-happen-in-the-studio trifles that scream label interference. On “Ain’t It Fun,” Williams’ chorus tries to break out of a song otherwise muddled by dull bridges and otherwise uninspired refrains. “Grow Up” is a one-note Maroon 5 b-side that should’ve been scrapped and offered to whatever the next High School Musical the Disney Channel is currently concocting. There are, it should be noted, some serious snoozers littered throughout the album, signifying a lack of clarity and direction in an effort that easily could and should have been shortened by four or five tracks. Songs like “Daydreaming” and the simple, gorgeous, “Last Hope” manage to shake those constraints adeptly, proving that the band is capable of something more flexible than four-on-the-floor manufacturing. This isn’t the band’s sound, no matter how much change has occurred behind the scenes-it’s a step backward, using pop power as a crutch rather than a launch pad. It’s an album packed with potential, and with potential singles as well, especially disc opener “Fast In My Car,” a song that sounds exactly like you think it might but still manages to trump fellow driving songs like Rihanna’s insipid “Shut Up and Drive” or Train’s bland “Drive By.” More often than not, Paramore’s rock roots find themselves twirled around of-the-moment electronic intonations, a surefire sign of a heavy-handed label. Think of her fourth album sonic transformation as that of a more jaded Best Coast, poppy and instantly recognizable while still maintaining its elusive distance from longtime listeners. Chalk the improvement up to the effusive Williams, whose vocals have never been this pleasing to the ear.
Produced by longtime Beck and M83 collaborator Justin Meldal-Johson, Paramore is an experiment in reinvention. Having hobbled along subsisting on one-off Twilight and Transformers soundtrack singles and the occasional award-show red carpet appearance, Paramore emerges relatively unscathed from its awkward transitional phase. Guns N’ Roses is now the Axl Rose Experience, the Smashing Pumpkins essentially boils down to Billy Corgan and whoever isn’t pissing him off at the moment, and now, pop-punk early aught-staple Paramore is merely lead singer Hayley Williams with the help of the newly recruited Jeremy Davis and Taylor York. We live in a world populated by bands that exist as mere shells of their former selves.
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