This Is Why

Twenty years ago, Hayley Williams was a naive if precocious homeschooled teenager and a devout Christian who had just signed to a major label, first as a solo act and then as the singer of Paramore. Now, she is a 34-year-old divorcée, a fierce advocate for abortion access, and a role model and formative influence for a new generation of pop stars. She has been famous for more than half her life, a position that can both foist premature adulthood on teen idols and shield them against the outside world. Paramore’s sixth album, This Is Why, trembles with the paranoid anxieties of a grown woman peering outside her bubble: a bit out of step, a bit pollyanna, but all the more furious at the status quo.

In the five years since Paramore’s last album, After Laughter, the jagged, sinister sound the band carved out on their earliest records has returned in the poison-laced anthems of artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Willow. Meanwhile, on a pair of solo albums, Williams brought in collaborators including boygenius and experimented with softer, more intimate production. As she reunites with bandmates Zac Farro and Taylor York, Paramore seem reluctant to retread their old rhythms: “We don’t want to be a nostalgia band,” Williams said last month. Instead of regurgitating the gnarled mall punk of their previous records, on This Is Why they reach for the propulsive sounds of post-punk. The genre’s wry lyrics and crackling energy hold sentimental meaning for Williams, who grew up on the early 2000s British post-punk revival. “It always reminds me of getting my driving license…Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm was always on in the car,” she said on her podcast last year. Yet in pursuing the sounds of their youth, Paramore lose the exuberance that launched their larger-than-life hooks into the stratosphere.

They’ve pivoted before, to Day-Glo ’80s synth-pop on After Laughter, where Williams’ impassioned frustration was a perfect fit for bright-sounding songs about being mad as hell. This time around, it’s a riskier bet. The barking monotone of Bloc Party and the Rapture is an odd choice for a vocalist with such an arresting range. While the jagged edges of “This Is Why” establish a jittery energy to match Williams’ punctuated belting on the chorus, songs like “C’est Comme Ça” draw too closely from their inspirations. When Williams adopts the flat affectation of Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw, she crucially misses the irreverence and quotidian absurdity that make Shaw’s non sequiturs hilarious and commanding. Instead, we’re given schoolyard taunts (“na-na-na-na”) and a summary of Williams’ recent medical history. Williams has masked prosaic lyrics with her booming voice in the past, but without a melody as her guide, she comes across as uninspired. “Getting better is boring,” she sighs. It certainly sounds like it.

This Is Why is front-loaded with similar lyrical missteps and ironies that would make Alanis Morissette roll her eyes: “No offense/But you got no integrity,” Williams sings with a smirk unearned by the weak disses on “Big Man Little Dignity.” On “The News,” a stilted treatise against the depressing churn of the 24-hour news cycle, Paramore appear to emerge from an early-2000s time capsule, only to be shocked and horrified by what they see on television: “a war” raging on the other side of the world, with no recourse other than to change the channel. It’s a sophomoric and one-dimensional outrage that lacks the venom Williams has brought to her political statements outside of the band. In interviews, the three members of Paramore openly discuss their political awakenings as Christians raised in the South, but they struggle to incorporate that nuanced perspective into their music. Instead, Williams spits a list of adjectives that feel straight out of 2016: “Exploitative, performative…rhetorical,” and, of course, “deplorable,” as if those words still burn fresh in her mind. It’s not that her anger is misplaced; it’s just that it comes off as too lazy and too late.

Once they shake off their millennial discontents, Paramore find their groove in the record’s second half, combining the atmospheric density of Williams’ brooding solo albums and the band’s bloodthirsty 2009 release Brand New Eyes. “You First,” with its Silent Alarm-esque guitars, is propelled by the full ferocity of Williams’ voice. Her vocals on the bridge weave hypnotically before crashing into the bombastic belting of its chorus, and Williams finally sounds at home, confidently waging war alongside the band’s newly sharpened contours. “Figure 8” adds the velvety drone of a clarinet before Williams takes control. “All for your sake, became the very thing that I hate,” she sneers. Her falsetto on “Liar” sounds inspired by the wistful melancholy of Phoebe Bridgers, yet when she doubles her vocals at the end, harmonizing with herself over chiming guitar, it’s still unmistakably Paramore. The rich instrumentation adds a layer of depth while remaining a natural fit for a band driven, above all, by fury.

“Thick Skull,” the first song written for the new record but the last in its tracklist, is the most optimistic vision of Paramore’s future: Williams’ patient lower register melds into her fiery roars, as if synthesizing her past and future selves. “Only I know where all the bodies are buried,” she sings. “Thought by now I’d find ’em just a little less scary.” The song marches slowly but with purpose, punctured by Williams’ screams and honeyed crescendos. It’s about making the same mistakes over and over again instead of growing wiser with age. But it’s also about bouncing back, ready to face the next challenge, even with bleeding fingers and mounting casualties. Paramore used to find inspiration in revenge; two decades later, they’re betting that resilience is the best way to get even.

Paramore: This Is Why

$27 at Rough Trade

$24 at Amazon

$23 at Target