Paramore - After Laughter

Drowned In Sound 80

Where those critics have been for the past 12 years is mystifying. They’ve always been a pop band - they’ve played dress-up with varying degrees of honesty and success, sure, but they’ve always been a pop band, and that’s by no stretch of the imagination a criticism. Evidence is available in abundance as far back as their debut, 2005’s All We Know Is Falling, on which only the singles really provided any suggestion that they were ever destined to be more than just pop punk also-rans. For their part, though, ‘Pressure’ and ‘Emergency’ had hooks at their cores once you stripped away the brash chug of the guitars.

By the time Riot! followed in 2007, that gauche approach - of coating everything in a thick coat of noisy rock gloss - was failing to conceal the melodic heart beating beneath. ‘That’s What You Get’, a setlist staple to this day, is a wildly catchy singalong. ‘Misery Business’ and ‘crushcrushcrush’, meanwhile, both came complete with stomping choruses. Two years later, Brand New Eyes took them further in that direction whilst establishing them at arena level - the bratty ‘Ignorance’ was infectious, and you could hear the fists-in-the-air machinations whirring away beneath ‘Brick by Boring Brick’. Plus, it came complete with a bona fide acoustic ballad in ‘The Only Exception’.

It wasn’t until Paramore’s self-titled album arrived four years ago that the suggestion they’d crossed over into pop really began to gather pace - or perhaps that should be accusation, seeing as a small but vocal section of the fanbase met it with sufficient consternation to imply that they saw it as the band’s Dylan Goes Electric moment. It seemed a strange time for that particular penny to drop, given how sonically broad Paramore was; ‘Still Into You’ and ‘Ain’t It Fun’ were as commercially flirty as anything they’d ever written, but you could just as easily have attacked them for having ‘gone post-rock’ off the back of Explosions in the Sky take-off ‘Future’, or of chasing the country dollar with ‘Hate to See Your Heart Break’ (which, fittingly, they’d go on to re-record with Joy Williams of Americana flameouts The Civil Wars). At its core, though, it did feel like a pop record - just not in a manner dissimilar to their previous releases; sprawling and diverse, it’s an album that bears comparison to last year’s second effort by fellow stylistic magpies The 1975.

Still, fans were sure that something fundamental had changed, and they didn’t just mean the lineup, with guitarist Josh Farro and his drummer brother Zac having departed acrimoniously in 2010. Maybe it was their bitter letter of resignation that led to a bit of a lightbulb moment, including as it did allegations - later accepted as accurate - that singer Hayley Williams was the only member of the group signed to Atlantic Records, meaning that she is in effect a solo artist masquerading as a rock and roll frontwoman; there’s something inescapably chart-pop about that image. As it happened, that was something that Williams was getting a taste of around that time, supplying the chorus on forgotten rapper B.o.B’s ‘Airplanes’, which topped the singles rundown in Britain and peaked at two in the U.S.

The change that listeners were trying so hard to put their collective finger on was two-fold; Williams’ voice, and Williams’ demeanour. The shouty upstart approach that she took in the vocal booth for much of the first three albums fell by the wayside in favour of a multi-faceted style that conveyed a range of emotions and sold you on all of them; she was menacing on ‘Fast in My Car’, earnest on ‘Last Hope’, boisterous and carefree on ‘Anklebiters’. The latter Williams was the one we were starting to see in her writing, as well; suddenly, perhaps because of the extracurricular turbulence, she was devil-may-care, opening up more readily at the album’s more vulnerable points and sounding genuinely defiant whenever she struck a more upbeat tone. The line “if there’s a future we want it now”, from the LP’s first single, speaks volumes about her determination to drive the group forward, away from the car-wreck of the Farro fallout.

The concern was that we might not get that same Williams on the next record as and when it did surface. After all, from the outside looking in, she’s hardly been struggling in the interim, launching a successful hair dye company and, last February, marrying her sweetheart of nearly a decade. Plus, there was confirmation that she’d buried the hatchet with the Farros, first from Josh in an interview and then, more emphatically, from Zac when he rejoined the band last year in time for the LP5 sessions. Presumably, they’ve both moved past Williams’ deviation from her religious upbringing on Brand New Eyes, which was the other major reason cited for their exit - given that the most offensive lyric was apparently ‘Careful’s “the truth never set me free, so I did it myself”, we can safely assume that neither brother is an avid fan of Dimmu Borgir.

Our first taste of After Laughter, then, was a disarming one. Put the in-your-face new aesthetic aside for a second, as well as the niggling feeling you’ve heard this track on a Dutch Uncles record before, and you realise that the opening seconds of the music video for ‘Hard Times’ has a visibly uncertain Williams, eyes clouded with doubt, singing incisively about depression: “all that I want is to wake up fine”. Farro’s back behind the kit, but bassist Jeremy Davis is conspicuous by his absence; he moved on in late 2015, and a subsequent lawsuit over royalties as well as liberal use of the word ‘backstabbing’ in reference to Williams in interviews put to bed any possibility that it might have been a cordial divorce.

It seems logical that a major reason for Williams coming across as so much freer and more candid on Paramore was because the Farro affair had left a not inconsiderable dent in her butter-wouldn’t-melt public persona. Maybe the Davis situation left a similar cloud over her as she penned After Laughter, because thematically, this is an open sore of a record, one frequently scored through with a sense of profound sadness. ‘Fake Happy’ might be the most striking track lyrically, detailing as it does the struggle to put a brave face on mental health issues - think Rilo Kiley’s ‘A Better Son/Daughter’, updated for the Instagram generation. There’s also the excellent ‘Rose-Colored Boy’, on which a world-weary and worn-out Williams champions cynicism over wide-eyed optimism, whilst ‘Idle Worship’ (geddit) sees her seething as she addresses a topic that has to have been on her mind almost as long as she’s been in the band - the untenable pedestal that the fans have always placed her on.

The chorus on that track is brilliantly bouncy, like a lot of After Laughter. It’s a much more homogenous affair than Paramore was, curbing adventurous urges in favour of turning out something that sounds largely cohesive. You do wonder, though, if their reliance on an Eighties sound has been overstated; plenty of the songs are indebted to that decade’s penchant for having the synths at the front with the guitars used more for tone and colour, but the way some observers have gone on about it, you’d think the record was called FRANKIE SAY RELAX. Just as palpable is the influence of considerably more contemporary musicians; there’s more than a shade of CHVRCHES to the vocals on ‘Told You So’, which is of course unfortunate. Much more encouraging is ‘Forgiveness’, which sees Tegan and Sara’s last two LPs and raises them a glorious stab at Fleetwood Mac all of Williams’ own, apparently inspired in part by an awkward meeting with Josh Farro in a coffee shop shortly after he’d cut ties. Neither ‘Pool’ nor ‘Grudges’, meanwhile, would’ve been wildly out of place on the last Best Coast album, on which the standard was high.

Williams does, though, have a curious tendency to occasionally descend into treacly cutesiness without much warning; ‘Proof’ was the offending track on Paramore, and here, it’s ’26’, which does a good job of making She & Him sound like Sleaford Mods even before the fist-gnawingly unnecessary strings come in. ‘No Friend’ is the other misstep, on which Williams bizarrely steps aside to let Aaron Weiss of mewithoutYou ramble moodily; he’s apparently delivering a bruising commentary on Paramore’s career that casts them as being wracked with self-doubt, but his vocals are buried beneath a broiling sea of reverb and you can’t make out a word he’s saying. It’s a shame, because the track itself puts the polish and sheen aside in favour of something that sounds as bleak as many of Williams’ words, and it would’ve been interesting to see where she might’ve taken it herself.

Maybe it’s the following track, the album’s last, that does the best job of balancing sound and feeling; ‘Tell Me How’ is a tense treatise on relationship breakdowns and the awkward static that ensues - “of all the weapons you fight with / your silence is the most violent” being one of the record’s best lines. All the while, in the background, are those arpeggiated, chirpy guitars that characterise so much of the album’s poppiness, but this time, they’re playing quietly. It’s hard to imagine that a Paramore crowd might be the kind to shout “Judas!” at the stage but, even if they were, such heckling would be misguided. After Laughter isn’t a reinvention. It’s the sound of Paramore casting off the weight of other people’s expectations. Williams has managed to get out from under the pressure of having to be the perma-grinning frontwoman, and the emotional uncertainty that’s exposed is fascinating. Musically, meanwhile, this is as free as they’ve ever sounded. Again: Paramore have always been a pop band. They’ve just never been this proud of it.

The Guardian 80

(Fueled By Ramen)

Every Paramore record unloads a fresh heap of inter-band strife – this time, their bassist quit and ex-drummer rejoined. It feels unfair that discontent dominates their narrative (the feminist emo band that made a platinum pop crossover), but it also inspires great catharsis. Throughout, Hayley Williams doesn’t sugarcoat her frustrations with false idols, futile optimism or anxiety, while reshuffling has kept Paramore nimble, abandoning rock for Tom Tom Club and Bow Wow Wow’s polyrhythmic zest, at its sprightliest on Hard Times and Told You So. Excluding the syrupy 26 and seething No Friend, After Laughter could be one of the year’s best pop albums.

The Guardian 80

(Atlantic)

Those watching from the periphery may regard Paramore’s move into pure pop as a natural extension of the mall punk and emo of formative albums. But for many, the group, who’ve endured a messy lineup change and subsequent legal disputes since their 2013 album, are in the midst of a rebirth. The grooves they always possessed are brought to the forefront on this peppy, vibrant record, a contrast to its lyrical themes, which cover masking misery (“I’m going to draw my lipstick wider than my mouth”), spiralling depression and the anxiety of ageing, only with a knowing wink. On Hard Times and Rose-Colored Boy, 80s pop production and highlife rhythms lead Hayley Williams’s powerhouse vocals to unexpectedly fun heights. After Laughter – candy-coated bitterness at its best – may steer them away from the Kerrang! crowd, but one thing remains consistent to Paramore’s emo roots – the theatrical mellifluence of internal angst.

Pitchfork 75

Hayley Williams knows how to play the part of the jolly conqueror. Even while singing of anger, betrayal, and disappointment on ever-bigger stages and in technicolor videos throughout the last 13 years, the Paramore leader has projected a pro’s poise along with a child star’s desire to please. Since she was a young teen, Williams has led angsty pop-punk singalongs with the friendly authority of a summer camp counselor. She has bounced around. She has smiled. She has been in complete control. But in the recent video for “Hard Times,” the first single from her band’s fifth album, things are a bit off.

The clip begins with Williams climbing out of a car that’s crashed onto a stage set decorated with cotton-ball clouds, wearing an unsure look: How did I get here? Soon enough, a microphone is put in front of her, and she starts to sing and dance to a bright new-wave bop. But all is not quite right. When she flashes her teeth here, it looks more like a rictus of madness than a sign of genuine pleasure, a wary smile from the rock’n’roll ride Williams has gone through.

Paramore have had enough tabloid-baiting personnel switches to warrant one of those color-coded timelines on the band’s Wikipedia page—because the truth is as long as they have existed, there have been whispers about Williams breaking away as a solo star. Though past members of the Nashville group have quit, whining about their second-fiddle status, you could argue that, by sticking to the idea of being in a rock band with her best friends—not exactly the most au courant concept in an era of ProTools pop—it’s Williams who has made the biggest sacrifice. So, after years of merrily keeping the Paramore lights on, the 28-year-old singer and lyricist considers her life and lets go of her grin on After Laughter.

Which all seems like an immense bummer. But just as this album highlights Williams’ most existentially despondent musings to date, it is also the most fizzy record Paramore have ever recorded. This extreme yin-yang quality is somewhat new for them. When former guitarist Josh Farro was leading the musical charge for their first three albums, his ominous, distorted anthems propelled Williams’ angst as she screamed into the void like a heavy-metal hellion, albeit one informed by a pious Christian faith; on 2009’s Brand New Eyes, which chronicled Farro and Williams’ real-life breakup, the instrumentation and the vocals each fought to tell their side, making for a glorious explosion. After Farro’s departure, guitarist Taylor York took over the musical heavy lifting on 2013’s Paramore, on which the group searched for a new identity, touching on post-rock bombast, string-laden balladry, and the funk-pop of their biggest hit yet, “Ain’t It Fun.” Since then, longtime bassist Jeremy Davis left amid a dispute over songwriting credits (he and the group recently settled a lawsuit) while former drummer Zac Farro, Josh’s brother, returns after six years. All these comings and goings might seem trivial in relation to Williams’ supernova star power, but the drama has always fueled her songwriting, as well as the band’s sound, to an outsized degree.

On After Laughter, York focuses his inspirations the styles of 1980s rock and pop, conjuring a slicked-back take on fixtures like Talking Heads, Paul Simon, and the Bangles. The current members of Paramore barely lived through the ’80s, and for them the decade represents something of an idyll—a time of neon colors and easy rhythms and feel-good fables like The Goonies. Instead of going to war with Williams’ words, the music acts as a gleaming counterpoint, a nostalgic lifeline from one friend to another. On “Forgiveness,” Williams doesn’t offer any, but the song’s lilting Graceland guitars hint at the possibility of a reprieve in the future; “Pool” finds Williams drowning under a wave while the track’s jangling sparkle pulls her above the surface. Music meets message more directly on album highlight “Grudges,” where Williams details her reunion with drummer Zac. “Are you recounting all my faults and are you racking your brain just to find them all,” she sings, peeling apart the fissures of friendship. “Could it be that I’ve changed—or did you?” At this, someone yells “woo!”—or maybe “whew!”—and the whole band tumbles into the chorus.

When the zipped-up hooks falter, though, Williams can seem gauche, especially for someone approaching 30. “Fake Happy” and “Caught in the Middle” come off like the basic complaints of a high schooler, and the maudlin “26” feels indulgent, a teary twinkle that wouldn’t feel out-of-place in a Disney cartoon. Much more intriguing are the album’s final three songs, where Paramore deal with their past and their role as modern idols in surprising ways.

Though After Laughter generally sees Williams exploring the softer nuances of her voice, “Idle Worship” has her seething and spitting as she rejects the heroism that’s so often projected onto her: “You’re wasting all your faith on me.” The song turns Biblical notions of false idolatry, along with radical fear and vulnerability, into a hook built to be sung by thousands of wide-eyed, hair-dyed followers. Meanwhile, “No Friend” is the weirdest thing to ever show up on a Paramore album. Sung by quavering emo intellectual Aaron Weiss of mewithoutYou over a queasy, cyclical riff, it essentially tells the story of Paramore in language that’s dense, referential, and almost shockingly honest, culminating in lines that seem to suggest the band’s craven core: “So let’s make one point crystal clear,” Weiss explains, “You see a flood-lit form, I see a T-shirt design/I’m no savior of yours and you’re no friend of mine.” Once again, this is Paramore dressing themselves down, calling their own motivations into question and exposing their darkest sides. The fact that Weiss’ voice is mixed low enough to be largely unintelligible tempers the song’s startling truth, and feels like something of a cop-out. Then again, this strange song’s inclusion doubles as its own bold statement.

The album ends with “Tell Me How,” which doesn’t sound like anything else here, or in the band’s catalog. With its cascading piano chords, vaguely tropical pulse, and warily confessional words, it could be a standout from one of Drake’s recent releases. It’s sleek, modern, and grown-up. Williams’ hurt here is well-worn, it’s the hurt of regret, of mistakes, of the unending task of moving on. There are no easy answers, no scapegoats. Instead of railing against someone who’s let her down, she responds with shrugging grace: “Tell me how to feel about you now/Oh, let me know.” Williams is not all-powerful, and she’s no longer trying to be.