Paramore — This Is Why (2023)

Paramore is one of my top five favorite bands of all time. I first started listening to them a bit later than most people I know, during my sophomore year of undergrad when their self-titled album came out. I was instantly hooked. I remember spending that entire summer with Brand New Eyes (one of my top five favorite albums of all time) on repeat. During that time, whenever I played the drum set at home I’d warm up to Fast in My Car because I loved the disco-ish beat the drums did. Even though Paramore doesn’t completely line up with the type of music I personally write and play, they’ve had an outsized influence on my musical style.

Before I get into the album, I have to take a moment to really appreciate Paramore as a band. First, Paramore has been around for almost 20 years at this point — their first album All We Know Is Falling came out in 2004, which is wild. The members of Paramore were fucking kids when they started — Hayley Williams was 16 when their first album came out. They’re essentially veterans at this point and they’re all only in their early 30s. They’ve gone through many lineup changes over the years, but I think their current iteration as a trio is their best one. 

My favorite thing about Paramore though is that they’re not afraid to jump between genres. After Laughter (2017) was an insane album because it fucking caught everyone off guard. Up until that point, Paramore had consistently been an alternative rock band. It was their bread and butter. There were always three things that were guaranteed whenever they put out a new album:

1. There would be heavy bangers on it

2. Hayley would be singing like her life depended on it

3. Zac would be beating the shit out of the drums

And then After Laughter came out and it had the last two guarantees but not the first. It was very much an indie pop/rock album! And it fucking ruled. Most bands aren’t brave enough to jump genres like that, and it doesn’t always sound well when they do. Not only did Paramore do it well, but people loved it. After Laughter is considered to be one of their best albums, and I think they gained a lot of new fans in that era too.

I love This Is Why. I think it’s a phenomenal album, to the point where I forced myself to stop constantly listening to it because I didn’t want to get tired of it. About a year ago when I first heard Paramore was working on a new album, I wasn’t sure what to expect. After Laughter was a very different sound for them, and I didn’t know if This Is Why would also be different. In the end, I think This Is Why is a new sound for Paramore, but there are still moments where the old Paramore shines out. Songs like The News and C’est Comme Ca have aspects of the old, alternative Paramore where the energy is up and Hayley is screaming a little. There are a few poppy songs too, like Running Out Of Time and You First that remind me a bit of After Laughter.

One of my favorite things about This Is Why is the rhythm section. In a typical modern band, the drums drive the rhythm section and the bass follows the drums and complement it. I like to think of the drums and the bass as being in a marriage because of how closely tied they are. On This Is Why, there’s a really interesting dynamic where the drums still drive the rhythm section and the bass complements it, but the rhythm guitar takes an outsized role in helping to complement the drums and drive the songs as well. Taylor York is a really rhythmic guitar player and he really shines on this album. You can hear an example of this during the chorus of This Is Why (the song) where the rhythm guitar and drum parts are sync up, to the point where the bass is even taking a backseat. I think this is a recurring theme on this album — the bass parts are really great, and they get straight to the point. There’s not a lot of flair or dancing around the neck that can be typically heard on previous Paramore albums. It’s almost like the drums and rhythm guitar are in a marriage, and the bass is their supportive mutual friend. I think part of this dynamic is due to Taylor and Zac being the only full time members of Paramore who play in the rhythm section. Brian Robert Jones is a fantastic multiinstrumentalist who is Paramore’s touring rhythm guitarist and he played bass on this album, which I thought was lovely.

I’d be remiss if I also didn’t talk about Zac’s drumming on this album. Zac is a phenomenal pocket drummer who’s really good at managing song dynamics. This has probably always been the case, but I don’t think it was easy to tell until After Laughter when Paramore’s sound and dynamics evolved. On all accounts, This Is Why is a very dynamic album. Songs like Thick Skull go from energetic highs to emotional lows, and Zac is really good at supporting all of that. On Thick Skull specifically, I love the energy in the chorus and the triplet hits he does. I find Zac to be very talented in general. In general I think a lot of people believe that in bands, the goal of the drummer is to be loud as shit the entire time and hit stuff really hard. And while that can be true and valid in a lot of bands and scenarios, great drummers (in my opinion) are ones who can manage the dynamic and lead the rest of the band. I think this really shines on this album.

One other random thing I love about This Is Why would be Hayley. She’s insanely talented, her vocals are superb as usual, and the lyrics are emotional. Hayley has always been the main songwriter of Paramore and I feel like the roles she plays became even more obvious on This Is Why, because some of the songs remind me of her solo music of 2020 and 2021. Crave and Thick Skull remind me a bit of the sound of her album Petals For Armor. 

My favorite songs on the album are This Is Why, Running Out Of Time, Figure 8, and Thick Skull. I love the bass line in the chorus of Running Out Of Time and how simple yet impactful it is. I love how jazzy the drums sound in This Is Why. I love Hayley’s vocal dynamics on Figure 8. I can feel the emotion when she sings “spinning in an endless figure 8.” I love the weird guitar shit Taylor does all over this album, it sounds like he’s genuinely just having a good time. 

Interpol — The Other Side of Make-Believe (2022)

Okay, literally no one asked for this but I’ve decided to share my thoughts on Interpol’s new album The Other Side of Make-Believe. I think it’s great.

First things first, I’ve actually been wanting to write my thoughts on the music I listen to for a while now. Music is a huge part of my life and I love both making music and listening to it. However, one thing that pisses me off about music journalism and reviews is when writers make negative comments or bash the music they’re writing about. Music is subjective — something I hate may be what someone else likes and appreciates, and vice versa. So I’m only going to talk about the things I appreciated and not do any bashing.

Anyways, Interpol is one of my favorite bands of all time. Their music fits into the post-punk revival and alternative genres. Their first album Turn On The Bright Lights (2002)  is one of my favorite albums of all time. I stumbled upon Interpol in 2016 because Everything Is Wrong from my second favorite album of theirs El Pintor (2014) happened to be on my Spotify Discover Weekly playlist that week. I was really excited about this new album, especially because I really loved their previous record Marauder (2018). Interpol’s music tends to be very heavy - it features complex bass and drum parts that fit very well together, with energetic lead guitar lines and distant sounding rhythm guitar parts. Paul Banks (the lead singer) usually plays rhythm guitar while Daniel Kessler plays lead guitar. However sometimes Paul and Daniel will both play lead lines, which can lead to songs that sound a bit frantic in nature (listen to Interpol’s song Barricade for an example of this), which I love.

I really like The Other Side of Make-Believe. I bought a vinyl of it twice. It’s a bit different from Interpol’s previous work. I heard someone describe it as sounding a bit like The National, and I think I agree. The songs aren’t as rock-y per se — many of them are stripped down to only the bass-guitar-drums essentials. However, the sound is still heavy. The lyrics are a bit haunting and introspective. Interpol wrote this album during the pandemic, which could be one reason for the sound. Again, I love it.

One of my favorite things about Interpol are the bass and drum parts in their songs. Carlos Dengler is the founding bass player of the band, and he’s famous for his work. The guy was simply insane, played in Drop D (and took full advantage of those two extra notes), and wrote complex bass lines that needed to be heard and understood. Interpol’s early records treated the bass almost like another lead guitar — it’s placed high in the mix so you can clearly hear all of the insane shit being played on it. Sam Fogarino is Interpol’s drummer and plays with a style that has a bit of flair and is almost jazzy in nature. With Carlos the bass and drum parts complement each other well, but both parts also take the time to add some flair and do their own thing before coming back and unifying again. Fast forward a few years and Carlos leaves the band. Paul takes over bass duties and writes and records all of the bass lines in addition to rhythm guitar. The bass lines in Interpol’s work transitions from the frantic and flair nature of Carlos’ playing, to a powerful and heavy sound from Paul that’s placed lower in the mix. The bass has less flair and gets to the point more, and I feel like this is represented well in The Other Side of Make-Believe. The bass and drums sound like a healthy marriage - both parts complement and support each other well. I personally think both instruments shine the best when they operate in this fashion. In an interview before the album was released, Paul said that Sam did some of his best work on the record and I couldn’t agree more.

I also love the guitar lines on Interpol’s past work and on this album. I love Daniel’s lead guitar lines because he approaches them with a true understanding of sound dynamics. Many lead guitarists in rock bands love to show off and make their guitar front and center (I’m guilty of this in the music I write). Daniel isn’t like that. He can show off when he wants, but he can also relax his playing as well. In several of the songs on The Other Side of Make-Believe, the lead guitar lines are in the background holding everything down, sometimes even taking a back seat to the bass and drums. You can observe this a bit in Mr. Credit and Renegade Hearts — the lead guitar is sort of in the background along with rhythm guitar and almost sounds like another rhythm guitar part.

My favorite song on the record is Mr. Credit. As I said earlier, I think the bass and drums sound the best when they complement each other. I feel like this concept is demonstrated well in Mr. Credit. It’s a heavy song with the bass doing a lot of slide notes and chilling on the lower strings, and the drums doing “resets” where Sam hits the crash cymbals and closes the measures out on beat 3, chills for a beat, and then comes back in on beat 1 like nothing happened. The bass and drums do a really cool thing in the last chorus where they’re essentially playing with the same energy they’ve been doing the entire song. Suddenly and unexpectedly the drums transition from driving with an open hi-hat to driving with the ride cymbal, and the bass stops doing slide notes and drives with full on eighth notes.

Anyways, I think this is a good record and I can’t wait to hear these songs live when Interpol comes to Atlanta later this year.

God is an asshole and we're all just living in his world

I’m kind of dogshit at making blog posts and setting aside time to write well thought out things, so I think I'm going to start using this as a place to write short and somewhat incoherent ramblings.

I went on a date this weekend with someone who went through really bad shit at a church they used to go to, and fully deconstructed from christianity. They grew up christian and put all of their time and energy into their community and following god, and had some bad experiences that made them leave all of that and decide they don’t even think god exists. The date was super fun and I had a good time, but hearing this person’s experiences with church made me deeply sad. I know too many people who have had similar experiences with christians and churches.

About two years ago, I was super involved in the church I was going to. I had what I thought was a community of people who loved me for who I was, I was playing the drums there weekly (sometimes in front of 1000+ people), and life felt good. Except I was bisexual and had to hide a large part of my identity just so I could be around my church friends and play the drums, because openly gay members had been barred from being volunteers there in the past. And then my church that claimed to care about social justice took zero stances on Trump’s harmful policies and police brutality. And then two of my dear friends who worked at this same church went through insane abuse at the hands of some people I used to really admire. And I decided to give up on church for good, because that hadn’t been the first time I'd experienced bad shit at churches and I decided it wasn’t worth putting my effort into trying to belong to a place or religion that wouldn’t accept me and constantly made me feel like shit.

I know so many people who have been hurt by christians. We’ve watched mainstream evangelical christians spend the last seven years supporting a fascist. I have close friends who have been looked down on by their churches for leaving abusive marriages (because divorce is a sin no matter the context to these fucking clowns). Several pastors made headlines this year for abusing their power and preying on women (Carl Lentz and Brian Houston). Is god even real? This is the question I keep coming to during recent months. So many christians and church institutions continue to steamroll over people. If god is real, if the god of the bible who went into fits of righteous anger whenever someone was being mistreated is real, then why does he continue to let people get hurt by those who claim to follow him? If I was god and my followers were being dickheads, I would immediately set them straight. But I don’t see that happening. The people at my old church who hurt me and my friends are doing great. The abusers of the person I went on the date with are still doing well. 

I consider myself to be Spiritual these days. I think there’s a god that exists, but I think they’re an asshole. Nature and the dirt and plants and human beings are too intricate and complex for me to think we all came into existence by happenstance. So I think there’s some omnipotent figure chilling in heaven but they don’t really care and just let their followers treat everyone like shit, and post racist boomer memes on facebook, and vote for fascists, and yell at women at their churches for trying to divorce their emotionally abusive husbands. Who knows.

Munich, Germany

Paris, France

London, England

2018 in Music

I don’t really have much to say except that 79 people listened to over 2,000 minutes of my music this year and I’m in shock. I feel so thankful. Thank you to everyone who took time this year to listen to songs I wrote and recorded in my apartment about having crushes and getting tattoos!

Hungary + Croatia

Budapest, Hungary

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Split, Croatia

Cleveland

What Would Jesus Do?

I've been struggling with my faith as a Christian for the past year or so. I'm not looking for a pity party, I just want to share how I'm feeling. I've been feeling overwhelmingly unsatisfied with the Christian church and how it has related to current events. Specifically, I feel that as a Christian, the Christian church is generally out of touch with the world. As I get older, I feel myself becoming more and more isolated with fellow Christians and finding it harder to connect. For example, based on my personal experiences, most days it feels like Christians my age are more interested in things like finding someone to settle down and build a life with, and I have a hard time relating to that.

The tipping point of my frustration was the 2016 Presidential Election, where 80% of White Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. Over the course of 2016, I watched many Christians voice their support for Trump. Meanwhile, Trump ran his entire campaign on hate. He promised to "build a wall," to ban Muslims from entering the US, to force US Muslim citizens to join a registry, and to bring back Stop-And-Frisk (a method ruled as unconstitutional because it solely targets minorities). These are only an incredibly small fraction of the things he has planned to do. He mocked a disabled reporter, was found to have sexually assaulted women multiple times, and doesn't believe in reproductive rights. Mike Pence is equally horrifying, as he supports Conversion Therapy and helped to create an HIV spike in Indiana by slashing public health spending.

I don't understand how a majority of Christians could vote for someone like this. Someone who promised to make the lives of those he opposed a living hell. 2016 was a frightening year for many of my friends and I because most of Trump's proposed plans directly impacted us, and watching them become more and more accepted was horrifying to experience. I'll never forget hearing about the hate crimes over the past year being done in Trump's name. I'll never forget the night of November 8th, as I sat with a few friends and watched state after state go red. I remember waking up the next morning, hearing the news, and being sick to my stomach. I remember hearing on social media that many people I personally knew were being targeted by hate crimes at my school. I remember being so distressed that I seriously contemplated calling the suicide hotline. I remember going on Facebook later that week and expecting to see my Christian friends denouncing Trump and the hate, but almost every post I saw was normalizing his presidency and simply promising to "pray for him."

I refuse to believe that the God I know would support the terrible things occurring in the world right now. Just this past week, Trump signed an Executive Order banning citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the US. This is horrific on just about every level, but no one seems to be talking about it. Nothing was said at church. Most of my Christian friends are completely silent. How can you profess to follow Christ but support someone like Trump, who has who promised to do all of these terrible things? How can you be silent when refugees are being persecuted for their religious beliefs and their country of origin? I've been sickened as I've watched people I used to respect, people who I would have considered to be "champions of the faith" support Trump. Every Sunday as I sit in church, I can't help but wonder how many of the people around me voted for Trump.

My Mom has reminded me this at least two million times while I was growing up, but my faith isn't supposed to be based on what others do, say, or think. However, it is incredibly frustrating to see professed followers of Jesus supporting someone who represents the exact opposite of everything Jesus stood for. In fact, it's disgusting and shakes me to the core. I refuse to normalize Trump's presidency and the current events that are unfolding. I'm far from perfect and far from having my faith figured out, but instead of ignoring current events and blindly devoting myself to praying that a heart as egregious as Trump's would change, I'm going to focus on living by and doing what Jesus considered to be the greatest commandment: 

“‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.””

— Matthew 22:36-40 NIV

2016 in Review

We are all terrible at addressing sexual assault

On June 2nd, 2016, Brock Turner was sentenced to only six months in a county jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. After originally facing a maximum sentence of 14 years, Judge Aaron Perksy decided upon the lighter sentence because "a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him…I think he will not be a danger to others." Unfortunately, Brock's Father wasn't satisfied with the light sentence, as he claims his son is paying a steep price for "20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life." During the trial, Brock Turner was portrayed as a good kid with great swimming abilities and good academics. During the trial, Brock Turner never acknowledged that he sexually assaulted his victim, and blamed the alcohol he consumed that night. Brock Turner gets to sit in a county jail for six months, register as a sex offender, and then live the rest of his life as a free man, while the victim will continue to live with the pain and memories of that night for years to come.

This sums up rape culture in America.

Our society is absolutely terrible when it comes to addressing sexual assault. There is so much miseducation, ignorance, and general laziness surrounding this huge issue affecting scores of men and women. It is assumed by many that sexual assault isn't as big of a problem as it is made out to be. However, 23% of female college students experience unwanted sexual contact. Society places the problem of sexual assault solely on women. Current Ohio Governor and former Presidential candidate John Kasich had the audacity to suggest that women can avoid sexual assault by simply not going to parties where alcohol is involved, as if it's only the woman's job to avoid being assaulted, and as if parties are the only places where sexual assault can take place. The truth is, half of sexual assaults occur within 1 mile of the victim's home. I find it horrifying whenever someone is misinformed on something like this, especially someone in such a high seat of power as John Kasich, who makes decisions everyday that affects 11.59 million Ohioans. With his logic, maybe women shouldn't even live at home?

People don't see the point in getting serious about addressing sexual assault. This Op ed suggests that harsh sentences for sexual assault perpetrators isn't necessary because it won't make a difference in getting more women to report assault, and harsh sentences end up damaging yet another person in the process (the perpetrator). What this letter completely misses is that the reason why many women (and men) don't report assault is because most of the time there is no incentive. In the rare case where a victim comes forward to report assault (only 32% of sexual assaults are reported to the police), they can face backlash such as retaliation and disbelief. Most of the time, the perpetrator receives a slap on the wrist and faces little to no punishment (98% of rapists will never spend a day in jail/prison), continuing the cycle in which victims don't come forward. Cracking down on assault and holding people accountable will make a difference, and the reason why we don't see this difference right now is because as a society America is not serious about addressing sexual assault.

Universities are failing to protect victims and punish perpetrators. Examples of this emerge time and time again, with the most recent being Baylor University covering up allegations of sexual violence by football players, and even retaliating against someone who reported assault. As of May 1, 2014, there were 55 Universities being investigated for Title IX violations.

We don't support women. For example, women at Ohio State have been lobbying for a Women's Center for years. Having a Women's Center is important because in 2016 women are still dealing with huge issues such as gender discrimination, sexual assault and equal pay on a daily basis. Having a place where women can receive resources and support is vital. However, administrators continue to drag their feet and offer excuses for not having one, such as funding. Meanwhile, Ohio State has the money to spend $42 million on renovations for Ohio Stadium, $700,000 on renovations for Browning Amphitheatre, $200 million on a new arts district, and continues to support a culture of big bonuses for administrators.

The thing about sexual assault is that it's everyone's problem. Every 107 seconds, someone is sexually assaulted in America. This means by the time I've finished writing this blog post, there will have been 364 people assaulted today. It takes each of us to get serious about assault, from no longer laughing at rape jokes to believing and supporting a friend or relative who comes to you and confides that they have experienced sexual assault. Unfortunately, unless we educate ourselves and start addressing this huge problem, nothing will change and we will continue to hear more and more stories like Brock Turner's. It's up to everyone to do something about it.