The Enduring Emo of Paramore Connects Past and Future at Moody Center
Hayley Williams' “dream we didn’t even know we were allowed to dream”
By Wayne Lim, 5:30PM, Mon. Jul. 10, 2023
Paramore has survived it all: multiple lineup changes, legal disputes, and a fan-worrying five-year hiatus.
Bandleader Hayley Williams ties it up best in “Crave” off latest album This Is Why: “Any second, feel the present/ Future and the past connecting.” Sunday at the Moody Center, the pop-punk authorities drew from their 20 years of continuous change linked by a constant, familiar sensibility. Joining the timeline, band members' solo tracks ever peppered in the catalog sweep.
Fittingly, Williams opened the 123-minute set of 22 songs with a poem addressed to her teenage self. As an ominous, glowing orb slowly expanded in the dark, Williams’ commanding voice covered the importance and inevitability of opposites, written for a friend’s newsletter earlier this year. “Good, and also evil,” she read, “Big smile, and also depression… Getting better, and also enough, enough, enough, enough.”
Never enough for Austin, apparently.
You see, phones flew up for the opening twofer of heavy rockers from This Is Why (“You First” and “The News”), and every last word of 2007 emo anthem “That’s What You Get” reverberated through the arena. Next, when the lights came on after the final belt of rage in “Playing God,” the crowd refused to let the singer speak. Instead, they erupted into a 70-second roar – still ravenous after the band’s two weekends at ACL Fest last October.
“That cannot be topped,” said Williams, who couldn’t even bring up the intrastate challenge she set up between the three sold-out Texas shows.
Meanwhile, the now-illuminated bandleader answered my most burning pre-show question: What’s the color of the night for the Good Dye Young brand co-founder’s ever-morphing hair?
Though past picks of orange, purple, green, red, and yellow covered fan heads on the arena floor, Williams opted for a clean platinum blonde on the third stop of the North American tour’s second leg. No streaks to be found, even after sporting purple extensions just three nights prior in New Orleans to celebrate the release of Taylor Swift’s album Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), in which she guests on the new vault track “Castles Crumbling.”
In Austin, the singer plunged into the Eighties leanings of Paramore’s own 2017 purple album, After Laughter. She swaggered through the jangly riffs of “Caught in the Middle” and sampled Whitney Houston and Tom Tom Club on New Wave-inspired “Rose-Colored Boy.” Then, Williams literally jogged through frenzied jam “Running Out of Time” – before the band hopped back to the howling guitar solos of fan-favorite 2008 select “Decode” and 2013’s “Last Hope.”
“Pinkies up!” demanded Williams. “It’s not a pinky promise. It’s something far more derogatory than that, and it goes out to Greg Abbott again.”
Continuing to spin, strut, and prance onstage, she proudly threw out her own pinkies through the loaded lyrics of “Big Man, Little Dignity.” In case her message was unclear, she later flashed a less subtle finger, after changing out her bright yellow jacket for a black T-shirt that read “ABORT THE SUPREME COURT.”
The night then slowed as drummer Zac Farro and guitarist Taylor York joined Williams on a raised platform. Their touring band – “The Parafour,” dubbed Williams – continued to support the trio during power ballad “Liar,” and “Crystal Clear” from Williams’ solo effort Petals for Armor. Between the gritty growls of This Is Why B-side “Figure 8” and the lulling sweetness of Brand New Eyes ballad “The Only Exception,” Williams paused to address the 180-degree transition.
In a moment of gratitude, she thanked fans for allowing Paramore’s longevity and sonic experimentation throughout their six-album discography.
“You know, we started the same age that the Linda Lindas are,” said the 34-year-old, prompting a wave of encouragement for their openers. “Twenty years past the year we met each other and became friends, to be still making music that inspires us and motivates us – and [to] have you be so passionate about it with us – is a dream we didn’t even know we were allowed to dream.
“You also allow us to experiment and just never know where we’re gonna go next. You make that fun for us, and you believe in us enough to let us go there.”
As the band flew through the latest summery single off Farro’s solo project HalfNoise, “Baby,” the all-too-familiar “Misery Business” interrupted to invite two “elder emos” onstage for a cathartic belt of the bridge. Then, the groovy, addictive refrain of “Ain’t It Fun” (“Don't go cryin' to your mama/ 'Cause you're on your own in the real world”) soon ushered in a double encore.
Following Williams’ loving dedication of 2013 anthem “Still Into You” to her band, and the arena-wide declaration of “We. Are. Paramooore,” the still-energetic maestros dove straight into the boomeranging licks of “This Is Why.” The singer’s headbanging, hair-whipping, and high-kicking leadership never ceased, and that’s exactly why Austin can never get enough.
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Paramore, Hayley Williams, Zac Farro, Taylor York, Moody Center
