Paramore - Brand New Eyes
By Nick Manteris · 0 Comments · Leave a Comment
Paramore’s previous album, Riot!, was filled with addictively catchy songs and an energy that made the name choice more than appropriate. Their sound is quite as bit more subdued on third album, Brand New Eyes, which is almost easy-listening by comparison. This discrepancy poses at least one important question. Which is the better song: the track that immediately grips your soul, demanding that you listen to it over and over or the song that starts out okay, slowly becomes good and then transforms into a favorite after it has been played numerous times? A good portion of the songs on Riot! fit the former description and only a couple of tracks from this album seem to be the latter type. It seems like the immediately accessible songs would have a shorter life, burning out sooner than the slow favorites, but not enough time has passed to judge these specific examples.
“Careful” was certainly chosen to be the initial song that people hear because it sounds most like the stuff that earned Paramore a platinum sales certification, but they released “Ignorance” as the first single because it has the “slow burn” quality that gets better over time. Unfortunately, after the first two tracks, this release descends into so-so territory before sinking even lower towards the end of the disc. Paramore’s slower offerings just don’t have the same fire as their high-energy stuff and – excepting the first two tracks – there is nothing here that could possibly grow enough to compete with their previous work. Speaking of previous work, they also include “Decode,” a bonus track that was recorded for the Twilight soundtrack nearly a year before…which is kind of a cheat because it easily bests everything else in this collection.
Brand New Eyes ranks only slightly above their debut, All We Know Is Falling, and Hayley’s voice does sound better on some of the slower songs…but it doesn’t matter how great your voice is if you don’t sing something that people want to hear.
It comes dangerously close to what I like to call the Mariah Conundrum: what use is a singer with a great voice if you don’t like any of their songs? (Mariah Carey is a technically proficient singer with a multi-octave range, but I’d rather listen to a blender while I make a smoothie.)
- Score
- 73%
The blame can’t be placed solely on Hayley though…the band all conspired together to produce the songs on this album and it’s likely that they wanted a change from rocking out all the time. Hopefully they will decide that they want to rock out again in the future and they can incorporate the stuff they’ve learned by taking it slow.
