If you haven’t spent time in a rock-and-roll band, you’ll probably never understand how every outfit, no matter how united in appearance, is made up of supremely self-conscious individuals continually teetering on the brink of a meltdown. Paramore seem to have had their share a few years back, as we learned that even a group of posi-to-the-point-of-annoying youngsters are vulnerable once the spotlights hit.
Brand New Eyes is a concept album about how psyched they are to be back in the saddle after staring into the abyss. “God knows the world doesn’t need another band,” lead banshee Hayley Williams intones amid a bed of whoa-oh-ing during a drum-heavy breakdown in “Looking Up.”
But with Paramore, every valley must resolve in a peak, and so just as the song returns to yet another volley of complicated nerf punk, Ms. Williams snaps to her senses about what a waste breaking up would have been, and it all explodes in a triumphant chorus of “We’re just getting started!” This is a trick the band deploy again and again, using darkness of tone and lyrical bent as a foil for their almost overbearingly ebullient trill.
PARAMORE | House of Blues, 36 Lansdowne St, Boston | October 19 | OFFICIALLY SOLD OUT
