Paramore - After Laughter Review

Paramore’s fifth album After Laughter is a continuation of the new pop centred sound that they curated in their previous album. Compared to the previous album, this is a great follow-up especially if you consider this an attempt to get past the sophomore blues as this is the second album of their more pop-orientated sound away from the punk aspect, but alongside that I must say the self-titled album still is a better album overall. This may just come down to personal taste but I felt more connected to that album then than I do to this album now.

The album has a core aesthetic of 80s/90s pop merged with the more current sounding pop and although this isn’t anything new, especially when you look at current indie bands, I think this album is probably one of the best executions of such a sound. You don’t have to look any further with that than Hard Times, their first single from this album and in my opinion one of the best pop album openers and songs written in this past decade. The song is immensely catchy and gives off the happy summery vibes that it needs to for a summer album, so much so that I can’t help myself dancing in my room to the song like an idiot. This sort of feeling continues in other great tracks like Rose Coloured Boy, Told You So, Pool and Grudges. We have other tracks that are a bit slower and emotional too, 26 is probably the best example of this, this is one of the strong suits of Paramore, managing to make a song sound so intimate but still so big with violins, xylophone, piano and another slew of instruments layered over each other. The album closer Tell Me How is another notable example of this that neatly tied the album to its ending. But one of the most interesting to me is No Friend, the first Paramore song to not have Hayley on vocals shows a moodier side to Paramore that hasn’t been seen before. We have a spoken word monologue quietly underneath the music that Taylor and Zac play together, it creates this mysterious tension, at first listen I thought this may be some response to ex-bassist Jeremy Davis leaving and his subsequent lawsuit, but later I realised this wasn’t the case, either way a really great diversion to what Paramore usually do.

Although I do love some of these tracks there are a couple that I have a love hate relationship for, there isn’t any problems with the instrumentals on this album, in fact I think that is the strongest aspect of this album, and I still enjoy these songs they are catchy but I have an issue with lyrics from the songs Fake Happy and Idle Worship. Fake Happy comes across so teenage girl to me, 'I'm so sad' type thing, which has always cringed me out, it is the way the lyrics is presented to me. 

Idle Worship has a similar problem in the way it is lyrically presented, a song that should be all about the idea of celebrities being held to too high standards and how the general public hoist them and praise them like gods of some kind, instead comes across as Hayley saying ‘I’m so flawed, I’m a really bad person, no one should like me, stop liking me’ This subject is tackled in a much better and intelligent way in the song No Friend, if you look up the lyrics for that song it talks about the same ideas but not in such a cringy way.

What it boils down to here is that the lyrics in both songs sound like a very self-indulged person, garnering sympathy from people because of being sad but then also put herself on a pedestal in later lyrics. I’m not saying anything she is trying to say is untrue, instead the way she has presented it feels like she is trying to get attention from everyone specifically on her rather than talking about the actual issues that the tracks should be about. If I’m wrong about this and are missing something go ahead and tell me but these are just my thoughts and take-aways from these tracks and their lyrics.

Regardless this album is superb, the last album is still better to me, I believe it is the most important album that Paramore have in their discography but After Laughter is an obvious great extension and follow-up to that album and that sound. I can’t wait to see where the band go next.

4/5 Stars