Brand New Eyes By Paramore

On their third studio album, “Brand New Eyes,” Paramore have managed something many might not have thought possible. They’ve taken relatively happy subject matter and put the most emo-sounding spin on it. Luckily, Hayley Williams doesn’t cry into the microphone as much as she did on the band’s last record and so “Brand New Eyes” makes for fairly compelling listening.

“Careful” opens the record in an anything but a careful musical manner – Josh Farro, Jeremy Davis, and Taylor York pick up the band’s guitar sound and run with it right through the track with all the energy necessary to open an album in a sterling way. This sets the tone for one of the two musical vibes that come off the album.

On the next track “Ignorance,” the first single from the album, singer Hayley Williams really shines as she sings with just the right amount of force and vehemence telling that “ignorance is your new best friend” in a relationship gone wrong. The incendiary lyrics will have fans shouting along in no time.

The other side of the musical coin comes in the form of slow ballad-esque songs the likes of “The Only Exception,” “Misguided Ghosts,” and “All I Wanted.” While these melancholic songs are pulled off slickly, you do eventually get the feeling that Paramore can show more emotion in their music when they’re running full steam ahead in a pop-punk furore. This’ll probably make you skip back to the other hotter tracks like “Playing God,” “Brick By Boring Brick,” and “Where The Lines Overlap” more frequently.

Overall, the sound on “Brand New Eyes” offers little variety – similar songs at different paces – but the music that is there is rocking and good to listen to and so this lack of variety might even end up pleasing a lot of fans. It’s not a must-listen, but it remains a solid effort from the young band.