Review Summary: With "Singles" Paremore has returned to their roots with a fresh breath of air to their sound.
For those of you who don't know, Paramore is a very popular rock band from Franklin, Tennessee. The band has released tree albums; All We Know is Falling, Riot! and Brand New Eyes. Some of their biggest hits are "Decode" from the Twilight movie soundtrack and “Misery Business” from the Guitar Hero series, and if you haven't heard of these guys, then you must have been living under a rock.
Lately there has been a whole lot of fuzz about Paramore. Why? Because the two founding members Josh and Zac Farro left the band, and they didn't leave quietly with Josh accusing vocalist Hayley Williams of being manipulated by her management, treating the rest of the group as her solo project, and claiming that she was the only member of the band who was signed to Atlantic Records, while her bandmates were simply "riding on the coattails of her dream".
In 2011 Paramore debuted their first single without the Farro brothers called "Monster", it was the second single from the soundtrack of the 2011 summer block buster movie Transformers: Dark of the Moon. While the band recorded "Monster", they also recorded tree other songs; "Renegade", "Hello Cold World" and "In the Mourning"; These are the four songs we are presented with in the bands brand new EP “Singles”.
While I wasn’t expecting too much of it to begin with, it caught me by surprise, because this is actually a pretty damn solid EP if you like their music. It has the touch their two first albums had that the third one was missing. Their first two albums had a much more youthful pop punk feel to it while their third album “Brand New Eyes” was stretching out for a larger audience with a more mainstream sound.
The EP starts off with “Monster” a dark song with a mid tempo. For fans of “Riot!” and “All We Know Is Falling”, this song should appeal to them. Even though it marks a return to their former sound, it is at the same time more mature with a much darker tone and theme giving the whole song a more serious approach. The song is led by (no surprise) Hayley Williams from beginning to end with a really catchy chorus that easily can get stuck in your head. The second song is a much more upbeat and happier song called “Renegade”, you could basically call this song “CrushCrushCrush Pt. 2”, because this is a typical Paramore song; upbeat and catchy. The third song is called “Hello Cold World” and is the most radio friendly piece on the EP. This song shares similarities with some of the songs on “Brand New Eyes” with its much lighter tone and high tempo. Although this song is meant to bear a serious message like every song on the EP, it’s hard to take this song serious seeing how it basically is a teenage pop rock anthem. The last song is a slow, and quite frankly… sad song. It’s called “In the Mourning” and lyrically deals about how Williams feels cold and betrayed. While all the songs (except for Monster, for all I know) deal with the resent changes within the band, “In the Mourning” leaves everything behind, it’s on another level. It’s an emotionally charged ballad lead by Hayley Williams and co which closes the EP off perfect.
Every album released by Paramore has credited Josh Farro AND Hayley Williams as the writers and composers of the songs. Seeing how this album brings Paramore back to solid ground, the Farro brothers might actually have been onto something, Hayley Williams is a brilliant musician and has indeed quite a lot of cards up her sleeve.
