Paramore - brand new eyes

Paramore's long-awaited third album is finally here to satiate the band's very large fanbase, (even larger since the success of 'Twilight') and most of them shouldn't be disappointed.

However, it would be wrong to say that the band from Franklin, Tennessee, chose easiness. Paramore, formerly a quartet and now a five-piece with the addition of the second guitarist Taylor York, seems slightly to step away from the rather pop turn approached with their previous album and to come back towards the more rock sound of their first release. 'Careful', perfect opener, is just excellent in its catchy but dark style a la 'Emergency'. 'Turn it off' and 'Feeling sorry' as well have atmospheres closer to those of 'All we know is falling'. Yet this is not a step backwards as the band improved itself on ever level. Paramore is so much carried on its charismatic frontwoman Hayley Williams's shoulders than we too often forget that the musicians behind her are far from being bad. Josh managed to forge his own songwriting, quite recognizable although in no way groundbreaking. The progression is even more important as the bands' members still remain quite young (their average age is less than 21). The melodies are more subtle, less straightforward, the chords are meticulous and the rhythmic part is ten times above what they've done in the past. But the most striking progression is yet Hayley's. Her range got way wider and her variations are surprising. Surefire vocal slap on 'Brick by boring brick', certainly one of the best songs the band has ever written. It was hard to imagine her even more pushed forward but it's the case, despite the good surprise that are Josh's greater vocal contributions. Other record's good moment, 'Looking up' is a 100% pop-punk tune and the riff from 'Feeling sorry' will remind you some The Starting Line listening times.
'brand new eyes' (to be typing without the cap, according to Hayley) however wouldn't be a Paramore album if it didn't have its two or three big flaws. Despite, here again, a visible improvement, the band's lyrical level stays very weak. As pretty as Miss Williams and her vocal chords may be, her writing remains really classical. Sometimes clumsy, a few times naive, often without surprise, her lyrics yet address quite different topics on this album, especially the one about the band's split that almost happened in February 2008. Hayley uncompromisingly and sometimes with a disconcerting frankness reveals what she had to reproach her masculine bandmates with ('Ignorance', 'Looking up'). But the sentimental songs are too often on the verge of the cliche ('The only exception') and the other ones lacking a real message ('Where the lines overlap'). Musically, the ballads are the weaker tracks. 'The only exception' will give you the impression that you've already heard it a hundred times and 'All I wanted was you' rushes into a more "generic rock" path (which we could already foresee with 'Decode', which can lead us to believe that it is due to Rob Cavallo's production) that seems to lead towards Avril Lavigne's field. The never-ending comparisons that the band got when they started may had been totally incorrect, on this song's chorus, the similarity is here. Mid-tempo, one-line chorus, the song is quite sub-par, just above the average of what is played on the typical American rock stations. The big difference is that Williams has a good band in the back and that her voice goes much higher than Lavigne's. it is yet still to be seen if she will be able to hold the notes live, as the girl already lost her voice during the first show of the tour. Laryngitis not helping, obviously.

'brand new eyes' is, at the image of its predecessors, irregular and imperfect. The faster tracks are hits, but the calmer parts, too generic, have a hard time moving the listener and some ballads are on the verge of the b-side. If Hayley Williams was not performing the vocals on these songs, it's a safe bet that they would have gone unnoticed. Cute, but hardly memorable. Paramore gave us three good albums, they still have to give us a great album. The potential is here, with no doubt. It's still a long road, but as their cannot-be-missed singer says it so well in 'Looking up', "we're just getting started!".

3.5/5

Recommanded if you like:
Jimmy Eat World, Anberlin, Taking Back Sunday
Check also:
Automatic Loveletter, BannerHill, Like A Movie

www.myspace.com/paramore
(Fueled By Ramen, 2009)