Paramore is cool. They’re legit. They’re good. Probably wouldn’t see them as a headliner, but I enjoyed the show.

They got this really great pop sound that doesn’t make you feel like a 12-year-old girl when you listen to it. The harsh, spine tingling chords aside the beautiful voice of the vocalist, and you’re given this musical duality that forces you to sing the ballad while banging your head against a wall.

On that note….the sound is great but never varies. Each song sounds alike and I had trouble telling them apart, which makes for a boring show. But the band has a pretty entertaining stage presence which kind of took the sting off the monotony. All of the songs are high energy, and have an angst-y sound, explaining why the tons of little girls surrounding me knew every word of Paramore’s collection. I was semi-enjoying the music when I turned to my left a saw like 50 brace-faced girls dramatically singing along, expressing all of life’s pressures within those 2 ½ minutes – when I began to get cynical. With pop, there’s a very thin line before you cross over to bubblegum, and Paramore best be on the lookout.

The vocalist really held down the show, and built a great rapport with the audience. She’s extremely likeable, while I didn’t really get a feel for any of the other dudes. Maybe because my nose was bleeding from the high altitude of my seats – but still – they could have thrown me something to nibble. By the end of the show I felt like Paramore was the singer with red hair. The instrumental intensity of the rest of the band is not working in their favor.

Overall, I just wanted to get the show over with so I could see No Doubt. Paramore had like one spark of creativity and then used it to make a record, therefore forcing us to listen to the same song 20 times. Don’t get me wrong, that one spark was killer, but to really make a mark, their going to need to spruce it up a bit. Probably a bunch.