Album Review: brand new eyes by Paramore

A guilty pleasure right? Platinum-selling, Wembley-filling, emo-punks Paramore. With their anthemic, prodigious take on guitar pop, it's no wonder the kids love them. But with brand new eyes, their third album proper, do the band's claims that they plan to 'venture out and experiment with our sound to see how far we could push ourselves' hold any water? Could this mean a new, bigger, better Paramore, or is this the sort of remark only heard before a band get 'serious' and lose what was so special about them in the first place under a mountain of strings, idiosyncratic time signatures and moody posturing? Their debut All I Know Is Falling was as passionate and precocious an album as could have been expected, although with some of the songs dating back to the bands' conception, faltered in places where it should have shined.

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Released in late 2009, Brand New Eyes presents Paramore as a stronger, leaner, and altogether more consistent band. "Careful" and "Ignorance" are two of the group's most aggressive tunes to date, and the rest of the disc follows suit, with the guitar interplay of Josh Farro and Taylor York (who makes his studio debut here, having joined the lineup after Riot! was recorded) receiving much of the spotlight. Drummer Zac Farro anchors the band with a flurry of snare hits and cymbal crashes, but the true MVP is none other than Ms.

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In England, Paramore sell out Wembley Arena in a day. Here, they fly fairly low on the radar unless you reside in Teenland. The emo-rock Tennesseans, fronted by 20-year-old Hayley Williams, breathe life into a genre made stale by whiny, self-satisfied Fall Out bands. She certainly makes a more commendable role model for teens than pathetic fame whores like Pete Wentz.

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MARIAH CAREY“Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel”(Island) When exactly did Mariah Carey stop singing? Even when she began flirting aggressively with hip-hop in the mid-1990s she was happy to impose her titanic vocals atop even the scrappiest production. And no matter how grimy her surroundings became — Ol’ Dirty Bastard, anyone? — she remained inexorably Mariah, an impenetrable acrobat of technique. Of late though, Ms.

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