Paramore's Self Titled

It's time! After a four year hiatus Paramore is back in black, or orange... The official release of Paramore's self titled album is this Tuesday but the band decided to release all four sides of the album on their site for the last four nights. After listening to side D tonight I felt I needed to give my critique. 

 Given that the Farro brothers are no longer in the band and the fact that they added a lot to Paramore's niche sound, this album is a lot less rock and a lot more pop than normally considered. They have ditched their emo upbringing for the time being and have traded it in for a pair of roller skates and a blow pop.  This album exudes a lot of upbeat, happy, and carefree bubblegum pop-ness to it. Knowing that Williams grew up listening to pop and really cherishes her 80s icons, you can hear how fun this album was to make. It feels light compared to their normal heavy beauty. Knowing its been awhile since their last release and how much  the band has gone through losing the Farro brothers, this album looks, feels and sounds like a good clean fun breath of well deserved fresh air. The album stands as a moving on and a looking forward attitude that the members often try to project in interviews and on stage; move forward, think positive, do what you love and try not to put others down in the process.

This album more so represents Hayley particularly I think more so than any of the others. Her background, her sense of style and her interests come cascading through the speakers. I will dare to say that I think this album is the auditory form of how she dresses. I kept thinking, "This sounds like her clothes..." while listening. If you're a Hayley fan you will understand this. A few songs really represent Jeremy and Taylor as well. Jeremy can be heard in the glimmering distortions and effects, where as Taylor really shines in the songs closest resembling their older stuff, songs like Proof, Now, and Future.

Hay Hay's voice has grown leaps and bounds and it's 110% evident. She has so much control and strength in her voice and shes not afraid of it. She's not pushing herself the way she has done in all of her albums, she's comfortable and you can really hear the strength shes starting to cultivate.

This album includes a lot of new things for the band. This album abandons most of Paramores go-to beats and tries on new simpler upbeats. They also have experimented with a plethora of background effects. This album has a lot of what I like to call "Pumped Up Kicks," sounds and effects that you would normally hear in Vampire Weekend, Discovery, or M83, which makes sense because the producer of the album has worked on many of those as well. In addition this album has a lot of "interludes" on it. These are completely unlike Paramores former sound in every way. They are all acoustic ukulele songs that bring back that old fireside-chat-radio-tube sound. They are classic, nostalgic, yet fresh and lovely. It's really nice to hear Paramore do something like this for a change. 

This is a breather album. This is something very "spring." It's new, simple, happy, light, and you can dance in your underwear to it with your best friend.

Album comes out on Tuesday. All of the songs can be heard on youtube by searching for the audio with the song name.

So get tah dancin'