FEATURE:
Revisiting…
Paramore - After Laughter
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THERE is talk of a new Paramore album…
PHOTO CREDIT: Pooneh Ghana for DIY
at some point this year. In this feature, I go back up to five years and look at albums that were hyped at the time and deserve a lot of focus and airplay now. After Laughter arrived four years after Paramore’s eponymous album. Both albums are great, though I feel After Laughter is stronger. Perhaps their best album so far, it is one everyone should know and listen to. As I do, I am getting to a couple of reviews for it. There was a lot of media interest around After Laughter in 2017. The band (fronted by Hayley Williams) were discussing this album that seemed to signal a new phase for them. DIY conducted an extensive interview with the band. I have selected some segments of the chat which stood out:
“Almost eighteen months later, the three current members of Paramore – Williams and York are re-joined by original drummer Zac Farro – are sat together in the corner of a lofty Nashville photo studio. It’s a Friday afternoon and the trio are in the middle of planning a trip to see Radiohead in Atlanta this weekend. It’s also just a little over a month until their fifth album ‘After Laughter’ will be released and, as of the time of writing, only a handful of people in the world have any idea what’s coming.
“It’s weird,” ponders Hayley, on how it feels to be five albums deep and over ten years into their career. “I still feel like we’re really green, especially with this record. It felt like there were so many new things to try and so many new feelings about life - you’re finally all the way over the hump of being able to deny that you’re an adult now. Yeah, this was a crazy record to make.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Pooneh Ghana for DIY
Unsurprisingly, the sense of anticipation surrounding the band’s next move has been palpable. In March 2016, the then-duo of Hayley and Taylor set sail on their second Parahoy! but fans remained uncertain of what would come next. And while their performances on board - their first after Jeremy’s departure - were fraught with emotion and honesty, with wounds still open, the four-day cruise would go on to be much more significant than they’d anticipated.
“I’ve never really wanted to cry on a cruise…” Hayley laughs, looking back at the rather emotional experience. “That wasn’t a selling point for certain!” It did, however, provide some much-needed catharsis for the then-two members. “Taylor and I talked about that right after it happened. It was really tough, and a lot had changed. All of a sudden, I felt very naked up there.
“[Parahoy!’s] supposed to be this fun thing; it’s meant to be a place where we all leave the world behind and we do our own thing, connect over music, play games and none of it matters, because who even knows how to find us? It’s this really beautiful community and feeling, yet I was really sad. There was this - I dunno - cloud that felt like it wouldn’t get off our backs for a moment there.
PHOTO CREDIT: Pooneh Ghana for DIY
“Then we did this meet and greet that was about three hours long,” she explains. “People were coming up and looking us very deeply in the eyes and genuinely telling us things like, ‘Oh man, we’re so proud of you guys’ or ‘We’re so happy we get to be a part of this music’. These really incredibly genuine sentiments. There are always these really nice reminders with Paramore that it’s not just about us. I think that’s why we’ve been able to survive all of this shit: because it’s not really about us. When you’re looking into people’s eyes and you know they’re going through something probably worse than you, it just gives you a fresh perspective. We came home from that with a little bit of extra energy to get going with writing again. It was a good thing.”
By the time June rolled around, the band – who had invited Farro back into the fold by this point – were gearing up to head into the studio. “I mean, I never feel prepared, but I was scared,” confirms Taylor, on how they were feeling in the lead up. “I did feel like we had all the pieces, but it’s always a bit terrifying.” After the ambition of their previous full-length, the bar was set high, and that sentiment wasn’t lost on them. “Music is one of the only mediums of art where you do something and that is what you exist with for years.” An artist can create a piece and move on, a director finishes a film then continues with their next project. “For us,” Taylor continues, “we make a record and we live it. There’s a lot of pressure from both outside and within, because you want it to be great, you want to believe in it. That was where the fear came in; it was about making something that we all loved and that - even if it didn’t work out - we could all still stand behind it and be proud.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Pooneh Ghana for DIY
The first step in making their fifth record was to build themselves a support network. Alongside Zac, who originally left the band in 2010 and has most recently been working on his own project HalfNoise, the group recruited ‘Self-Titled’ producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen to co-produce with Taylor. “When me and Hayley went into the studio,” adds Taylor, “we were a duo, so it was about putting people around us that we had history with and confidence in.” Rebuilding their bridges, they tried to create something that felt much more like a band. They were able to move forward, and more importantly, be themselves.
That’s an element that has ultimately shaped ‘After Laughter’ itself. While their previous record saw them giving anything a go, this time around they knew the path they needed to tread. Building upon the high octane energy of the likes of ‘Ain’t It Fun’ and ‘Still Into You’, it takes the bubbly vibrancy of those tracks and cranks it up to eleven.
“We intentionally didn’t look back at all,” Taylor is quick to assure. They now finally felt liberated enough to pursue the sounds they’d played with last time, but in a bigger way. “I really wanted this album to be different, but I didn’t really know what that would be like. I knew I didn’t want a ton of high lead guitars and I was getting kinda sick of head banging - our necks just always hurt!” While ‘Ain’t It Fun’ represented one of the most distinctly different sounds they explored last time around, now it was about calling upon the attitude and the mentality that had allowed for that song to be birthed in the first place. “We definitely just wanted to be honest with where we’re at,” he adds, “and be excited to listen to [the music] ourselves.”
Honesty was also the key component within Hayley’s lyrics. While Paramore have never been a band to shy away from pain or hardship in years before, this set of songs shout the message loud and clear. Unabashed and open, raw to the last, with titles like ‘Hard Times’, ‘Forgiveness’ and ‘Fake Happy’, the album shows that it’s clear the pain they’ve felt over the past two years hasn’t dimmed. Now, they’re unafraid to show it. “You can say it, it’s alright!” laughs Hayley, at the suggestion that these lyrics are much more forthright in their, well, sadness. “Honestly, we don’t even have the energy…” she admits, trailing off a little.#
After almost a decade of dealing with issues - whether they be the departures of band members, the band’s portrayal in the media or simply the mechanics of the industry - it’s no shock to learn that Paramore are often exhausted. “We went through enough shit, man,” she goes on. “It’s not a selling point; life can be so hard. It’s funny to think that there’s anybody in the world that would look at us and think that our lives aren’t really hard just because we played Wembley or something. That’s cool but we still go home at the end of the tour.
“We’ve been playing shows for years and have been around so many people and parts of the world, and you just reach a certain point where you’re like, ‘I’m done.’ We don’t ever wanna be rude or unprofessional, but we’re just people,” she continues, tapping into one of the album’s main sentiments. “If we’re all faking it or being phoney, when do we ever get to connect? I don’t want to live in that mindset anymore, where I have to perform, not on stage but, as a human. It’s just tiring!”.
To show why After Laughter deserves some more love, there are a couple of reviews worth sourcing. With so many great songs and some brilliant production from Justin Meldal-Johnsen and Taylor York, After Laughter is a terrific album. This is what NME had to offer in their review:
“Emo kids’ eyeliner will be even smudgier than normal this week, because on their fifth album Tennessee alt.rockers Paramore have finally fully ditched the serrated guitar-driven angst and the baggy trousered alt.awkwardness and taken a swan dive heart-first into a big, sunny swimming pool full of old school pop bangers.
Hayley Williams might have heavily hinted at the band’s new direction on 2013’s power-pop leaning ‘Paramore’ album, but ‘After Laughter’ comes over like the earnest, fist-pumping soundtrack to a long-lost John Hughes coming-of-age film. No longer is this a band to file alongside My Chemical Romance but rather the glossy likes of Haim, especially when the sassy handclaps and hairflicks of ‘Forgiveness’ kick in. The nods to their punk past are few and far between, coming through only ska-inflected bounce on ‘Caught In The Middle’, which brings to mind early No Doubt, and the moody, marauding ‘No Friend’, on which Hayley takes a time-out and lets Aaron Weiss from Philadelphia rockers mewithoutYou holler grumpily.
But that’s certainly no bad thing – unless you’re really, really attached to 2006. With it’s perky marimba, album opener ‘Hard Times’ sets the scene perfectly; a synth-y, tropical offering that’s as cheery and comfortingly brash as a Hawaiian shirt worn out of season – it’s possible to hardly even notice that the lyrics are about being in a damn shitty mood (“Walking around with my little rain cloud / Hanging over my heard and it ain’t coming down”). ‘Told You So’ is similarly sprightly, but with an equally glum outlook (“For all I know / The best is over and the worst is yet to come”). More sonic therapy comes via the addictive ‘Grudges’, which feels like a turbocharged take on The Bangles, and bouncy ‘Pool’ while there’s whispers of classic rock heroines Heart in the dreamy power ballad ‘Forgiveness’ and string-laden ‘26’.
Catharsis is never usually this joyous, but sometimes smiling through the pain works better than crying”.
To finish, I want to quote more extensively from a review that Consequence put out. Even though After Laughter got a couple of mixed reviews, the overall reaction was one of huge positivity and respect. It is deserved for an album that is a real pleasure. With so many different sounds blending together, it is no wonder what so many publications ranked After Laughter among their favourite albums of 2017:
“Consider the megahit single from Paramore, “Ain’t It Fun”. In addition to being quite possibly the best song Paramore have written, “Ain’t It Fun” typifies the band’s ability to keep one foot in its established identity while toeing new sonic territory with the other. The exultant gospel choir in the song’s sing-along bridge is a hat-trick unheard in the band’s prior LPs, but the palm-muted and distorted guitar chords that accompany the choir keep Paramore rooted in their alternative rock and emo origins. With Paramore, the old is rarely far from the new. The same applies to After Laughter, which, for all its bouncy synths and sugary hooks, still echoes the angsty band that made Riot!. When Williams accuse-asks on “Fake Happy”, “You think I look alright with these mascara tears?”, one can’t help but remember the stud belts and black skinny jeans copies of Riot! were sold alongside at Hot Topics nationwide.
Original drummer Zac Farro returns to Paramore on After Laughter after having split from the group with some controversy in 2010. This follows the similarly controversial departure of bassist Jeremy Davis, which took place after Paramore’s release. (A 2016 legal battle between Davis and the band ended in a settlement this year.) Since Farro’s initial departure in 2010, it has become something of a staple to speak of Paramore’s tumultuous lineup, as if with each new (or returning) member, something about the band itself must also be changing. Even with the shifting instrumental emphasis and differences in timbre on After Laughter, Paramore do a fine job building on the momentum initiated by their widely acclaimed self-titled record.
Lead single “Hard Times” kicks things off with a Hot Chip calypso jam, which concludes with an irrepressibly catchy riff in the outro. Even in this moment of genius, however, there is an unfortunate sign of strange things to come. The arpeggio riff at the end of “Hard Times” is matched note-for-note by a robotic voice, the sound of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories joining the party in the last few seconds. “Hard Times” is a fine single and a great choice to open After Laughter, but such sonic accoutrements are unnecessary when the core of the song itself is solid. The same goes for “Fake Happy”, which boasts a simple and effective synth riff and yet inexplicably begins with a hushed acoustic intro, with Williams’ voice filtered through a kind of telephone effect. In moments like these, After Laughter’s wise emphasis on hooks and choruses is unnecessarily accented by odd instrumental and arranging choices.
When the hooks are good, though, they’re great. “Rose-Colored Boy”, despite its somewhat clunky titular metaphor, joins “Ain’t It Fun” in prime sing-along quality, both for its cheerleader intro and Williams’ impressive vocal gymnastics in the chorus. “Idle Worship” provides some welcome energy late in the record, especially given that the odd, mostly throwaway Aaron Weiss (mewithoutYou) feature, “No Friend”, derails an otherwise strong conclusion to the record. Weiss contributes a mostly spoken, mostly inaudible series of cryptic sentences that practically beg listeners to read into them as a description of Paramore’s career: “A semi-conscious sorrow sleeping in the bed I’ve made/ That most unrestful bed, that most original of sins/ And you’ll say that’s what I get when I let ambitions win again.” The last of those three sentences puts into words an objection raised against Williams in past controversies related to Paramore. To some, Paramore can appear to be Hayley Williams Featuring Some Other Guys.
If there’s one thing Paramore and now After Laughter disprove, it’s that very suggestion. Williams boasts undeniable talent, but her gusto requires the sharp songwriting and clever instrumentation of her bandmates, and After Laughter testifies to what happens when a singer like Williams is met with a group of quality instrumentalists. The truly interesting conflict for Paramore on After Laughter comes not in there being yet another lineup change, but rather the band’s juxtaposition of angsty lyrics and cheery pop. “Throw me into the fire/ Throw me in, pull me out again,” Williams sings atop the insistent bass drum and slinky bassline on the bridge of “Told You So”. No matter its rocky moments, After Laughter exhibits the enduring trait that makes Paramore so appealing: Even when the situation is dire and emotions are running high, they tell it like it is with smiles on their faces. You’d be forgiven for missing the seriousness on After Laughter for just how much damn fun it is”.
A wonderful album that is right up with Paramore’s best work, After Laughter is one that I was eager to revisit. I said that there may be an album from them this year. In January, it was confirmed that the band have entered the studio to work on their upcoming sixth album. It does seem like it will be a more guitar-heavy release. Before we get that, have a listen back to the amazing After Laughter. It is a fine album from…
A great American band.