‘After Laughter,’ and How Bands Evolve
Sometimes weird can be good
I used to listen to Paramore, like a lot of other teenagers my age. I loved their aggressiveness, energy, and heavy-hitting sound. It’s been a long time since 2009, though (the year they released the last album I listened to), and a host of drama has swirled around the group since that date. I never paid much attention to the band’s personnel issues, and I assumed that their best days were behind them when (a) two original band members left, and (b) their 2013 release garnered poor reviews.
Since then, Paramore released their latest effort After Laughter to solid critical acclaim. Intrigued, I pulled the album up on Spotify to listen to it, and I came away unimpressed. A few days later I tried again, with the same result. The album was weird in that it completely ditched the band’s rock roots in favor of a pop aesthetic. It wanted to like it, but couldn’t get into it enough to really enjoy anything, and I wasn’t sure that the songs were good enough to merit more attention.
Yesterday, I pulled the album up for a third (and potentially final) try. This time, it clicked. The rhythm of “Hard Times” is catchy and fun, and the chorus of “Fake Happy” stuck in my head for hours afterwards. It may be odd that it took me three listens to a supposedly-accessible album before I really liked it, but I can say now that After Laughter is a genuinely good album, one I wouldn’t be surprised to see on my year-end list. As an example of how bands change and evolve, it shows Paramore with more passion and inventiveness than they’ve displayed in a while.
I don’t really mind the stylistic change once I got past its weirdness. Paramore originally sounded good as a pseudo-punk band, and their rock style was fun, but change is also important for any musical group. My biggest problem with the album initially was that I just didn’t get it. I think some of that stems from the opening song, which is off-putting in a way it doesn’t need to be. “Hard Times” is a fine listen, but takes some time to settle on the ears. “Fake Happy,” by comparison, is a much more accessible song that could have provided a better introduction to the pop styles of the album as a whole.
Sowing Season, a writer for Sputnikmusic, summed up the stylistic change well. He wrote, about the clash between rock and pop,
But that’s the beauty of it…they were never going to claw their way back into relevancy by playing to a style of music that fell out of favor in 2009. Here, they sound refreshed and ready to join the world of new wave synth-pop in 2017.
That’s a good way to put it. Music is constantly changing, and constantly shifting. We as listeners love to hear songs from past decades (as the nostalgia of the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack demonstrates), and part of this appeal is that we recognize how much music changes year to year. Bands who don’t evolve risk falling out of all semblance of relevancy, and it’s impossible to fault Paramore for trying something new.
I will maintain, though, that this isn’t their best album. I still think the songs and energy on RIOT! are better, and they probably are on Brand New Eyes as well (though I need more time to say for sure). But I don’t say this because I think rock music is inherently better than their new pop sound. Sometimes, bands write their best music at an early date and never quite reach the same heights.
Ultimately, I’m impressed that Paramore shifted styles so drastically, and so well. Not long ago, I wrote that Coldplay had changed so much that they are now unrecognizable, and I still hold to that. Coldplay changed from a vaguely-orchestral, atmospheric band into a full-fledged pop/dance music group. That in itself is fine, but the quality of the songs dropped so quickly that I only bother to listen to their early albums now. That’s not snobbery, it’s the realization that good songwriting is by far the most important ingredient. And where Coldplay grew lazy, Paramore didn’t. The songs on After Laughter are clever, well-written, and easily worthy of listeners’ time.
The high point of the album, the point where the band gets weird and inventive at the same time, is “No Friend,” which features Aaron Weiss of Mewithoutyou (one of the most talented bands I can think of). Weiss delivers his trademark spoken-word style throughout, a stark clash with the melodic sound on the rest of the band. The lyrics, lyrics that only Weiss could write, are fantastic:
Another brick-red room, another black-top town
Another misspelled band burning their own houses down
Another pine-box tune to fill the cemetery day
Another stay, a touch of orange over purgatory grayAnother thorny field to scatter fruitless seed
Another song that runs too long, God knows no one needs
More misguided ghosts, more transparent hands
To drop a nickel in our basket and we’ll do our riot! dance
Seamlessly dropping in references to previous albums and songs, Weiss briefly covers the tumultuous history of Paramore as a band. Even though many of the lyrics on this song require further exploration and evaluation, the broad contours of the story he and Hayley Williams are telling is clear. And the excellence of the rest of the album punctuates it. Bands go through turmoil, band members leave (and sometimes return), and often groups lose touch after time. Here, that hasn’t happened.
I thought Paramore’s career was effectively over after their 2013 album. After a few listens to After Laughter, I still wasn’t sure they would ever make good music again. Happily, I was wrong on both counts. This is a great album, one that draws on a long career of good songwriting and deliveries. I don’t know what the future holds for this band, but they’ve weathered enough storms to convince me that more good albums should be on the way.
