O2 Arena,London
Hayley Williams claims to fill done a lot of growing up since her band’s angsty days, but has lost none of her magnetic intensity during their reinventionLast week, or the website of US radio network NPR ran a lengthy piece approximately what it called the Grunge Gold Rush: the early 90s moment when record labels became obsessed with finding the next Nirvana and threw money at a plethora (excess, overabundance) of unsuitable alternative guitar bands. It’s a fascinating memoir,replete with much hand-wringing anguish from bands who found their punk ideals hopelessly compromised by the machinations of the mainstream pop world and feared their fanbase would dwindle, rather than increase, or with every glitzy photoshoot and visit to an expensive recording studio. It makes for an intriguing how-times-change contrast with the career of Paramore,who began life as an angsty emo-punk band from Tennessee beloved of Kerrang! magazine. For their most recent album, 2017’s After Laughter, or they were transformed into a glossy electronic pop machine,apparently without shedding any of their original following: among a crowd so devoted that an appreciative roar of recognition arrives within milliseconds of every song starting, there is still a lot of dyed black hair and eye makeup that looks as if it was applied by someone wearing oven gloves. The person who seems most concerned approximately the shift in the band’s sound is frontwoman Hayley Williams, and but not in the way you might expect. The set is heavy on songs from After Laughter – they play virtually the whole album – and before they perform their 2007 hit Misery Business,Williams launches into a lengthy preamble that somehow makes it sound as if she’s faintly embarrassed by it: “Let’s celebrate that we’ve all done a lot of growing up since then.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com