After Laughter

Album: After Laughter

Artist: Paramore

Released: May 12th, 2017

Highlights: Hard Times, Forgiveness, Pool, Caught in the Middle

Fast-paced tracks, a basic approach to instrumentation, highly melodic choruses that lean towards the anthemic, and the expression of feelings in a rather dramatic way. All of those characteristics are intimately tied to the pop punk genre, a brand of rock music that seemed to apply to more than half of the successful groups that emerged in the early 2000s. As time would go on to reveal, though, another trait was particularly prominent in that scene: the almost total inability that artists thriving in that style displayed when it came to breaking into new musical realms.

In hindsight, that odd common ground was perhaps not too surprising; after all, many of the forefathers of the genre – like the Ramones and Green Day – had, despite their long careers, already gone through arcs of general artistic stagnation by the time the wave of young pop punk rockers conquered the mainstream. Consequently, one could have easily guessed that acts such as Blink 182, My Chemical Romance, Good Charlotte, and Sum 41 would die in the genre into which they were born by either not even trying to go out the door or falling to pieces in the attempt. For a while there, it seemed Paramore was destined to go down the road traveled by their peers, because although their first three records showcased clear signs of growing maturity and quality, they – save for the occasional ballad – did nothing to escape the clutches of pop punk.

That narrative began to change with their 2013 self-titled work. Across a whopping seventeen tracks, the band – without the man who had, since their inception, been their main songwriter – overcame the odds to put together an excellent and varied album of alternative rock that sounded like Paramore, but successfully danced to the tune of various different influences, including funk, power pop, noise rock, and more. With such a wide palette of new sounds laid across the table, the group could have embraced any of them in order to build a uniform sequel, hence making “Paramore” go down in history as the necessary crazy and heterogeneous experiment that needed to be conducted before the band could move on.

However, what the trio does in “After Laughter” is take another unexpected detour, this time towards the arms of pop rock. It does not completely throw away what was done and achieved during “Paramore”, for the bubblegum aura that surrounds “After Laughter” gains stunning originality due to how it is sprinkled with a love of new wave that was very much evident in that album. Still, the fifth record by Paramore is also their second straight blatant break with the past, because the twelve tunes it carries have little to no resemblance to what was done before. It still, mostly thanks to Hayley Williams’ unmistakable voice and personality, sounds like Paramore; yet, it is so far apart from their pop punk origins that it could have been released under another brand.

As an album, “After Laughter” sounds playful, sleek, and colorful. There is a joyful bounciness underlining a great portion of its tracks, whether they are energetic, like the opening trio of “Hard Times”, “Rose-Colored Boy”, and “Told You So”, or introspective, like the pair of “Forgiveness” and “Fake Happy” that follows right afterwards. It is easy to see Hayley Williams jumping around stage while she delivers the lyrics to much of the record. Rather than coming purely from its pop heart, though, that irresistible sway originates from how “After Laughter” mingles keyboards and synthesizers with an organic percussive approach of Caribbean blood.

Marimbas, bells, and percussion that delivers polyrhythmic beats are as constant as the electronic components of the music, smartly adding a warm organic vibe to a sound that could have – otherwise – come off as overly processed. Due to that, “After Laughter” is as glossy as it is primal. It is the alluring encounter of the Talking Heads’ rhythmic experimentations of the “Remain in Light” era with the immediacy and catchiness that the pop scene tends to demand, showing that while Paramore is very much still looking to take a bite out of the commercial pie, they want to do so by delivering music that has artistic value and pushes forward. It is true that the album has moments when it retreats towards the mundane, like in the acoustic ballad “26” and in the piano-based closer “Tell Me How”, which are beautiful but – alongside the pointless electronic experiment “No Friend” – rank as the weakest points of the record. Mostly, though, the core recipe of “After Laughter” is not just boiling finely, but also delivering incredible pop treasures.

Through a brush with ska (“Caught in the Middle”), a meeting with synth-pop (“Rose-Colored Boy”), a trip through colorful and soft psychedelia (“Pool”), and numerous encounters with gigantic hooks delivered both via Hayley’s voice and catchy synthesizer work, “After Laughter” presents an interesting dichotomy between what is being played and what is being sung. If, instrumentally, the record hints at brightness and energy often accessed by those who are happy, its lyrics – as a clear link to the band’s pop punk origins – reveal emotional trouble and pessimism, with many of them ranking as some of the most cheerful-sounding takes on depressive states of mind to ever be recorded, a theme that is smartly summarized in “Fake Happy”, a track about how those who are struggling emotionally tend to put on a positive facade out of fear of being judged or sheer shame, masking their sadness with empty smiles.

It is a keen take on society, but – more interestingly – a sharp reference to the record itself, which disguises a whole lot of anguish with the feel-good air emitted by its relaxed music, the dancy nature found in its beats of electronic and percussive origins, the excellent synthesized pop luster that powers its tunes, and the contagious melodies Hayley delivers with impossible consistency. More than being a reinvention and a rare example of a pop punk band being able to abandon the genre with success and show both vitality and flexibility, “After Laughter” is a genuinely good album of thematic and musical excellence.