Friday, August 22, 2008
By John Benson
The band’s sophomore album went platinum, much to its surprise.
It’s all about setting goals for Paramore bassist Jeremy Davis.
When the Franklin, Tenn.-based band entered the studio to record its sophomore album “Riot!,” which was released last year, the punk-pop group’s objective was simple.
“Our main goal was to come out of there, be better musicians and just to really make it an experience instead of just going in and throwing down some songs,” said Davis, calling from the V-Fest concert festival in Baltimore, Md. “We wanted to come out of the studio and for people to be able to notice a difference.
“So we spent a lot of time practicing and getting to know our instruments better and working with each other more and even adding more instruments. Literally, that worked wonders for us because we were touring for several years playing the same songs without basically having any time to get better. So that was the biggest difference, and I think it showed.”
He’s right. While Paramore’s 2005 debut effort, “All We Know is Falling,” did get the band noticed, the album failed to break the band into the mainstream. Then came the late spring 2007 release “Riot!,” which, buoyed by the success of its four singles – “Misery Business,” “Hallelujah,” “Crushcrushcrush” and “That’s What You Get” – has gone platinum.
Davis said nobody is more surprised about the disc’s success than the band itself.
“When we released the album ‘Riot!,’ we had a goal to sell 500,000 records by the time we came out with another record,” Davis said. “So it was amazing to us when we crossed 500,000 the first few months in. It was the biggest shock ever. Then we had to make new goals for ourselves, but it was pretty cool.”
One of the goals of the Hayley Williams-led band was to polish its live show. After many touring legs, including on last summer’s Warped Tour and last fall as an opener for Jimmy Eat World, the foursome is now on its last outing. “The Final RIOT! Tour” comes to Northeast Ohio for an Aug. 24 show at the Time Warner Cable Amphitheatre at Tower City.
The current set list includes all of the group’s hits, many of which are reworked.
The band is also performing Jeff Buckley’s version of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ as an intro to its own track “Hallelujah.” Davis said something else exciting for fans is the fact that the group is playing “Riot!” track “We Are Broken” for the first time. The song has been completely dismantled and changed from its studio form.
Perhaps such an adventurous performance within the live realm will lend itself to Paramore getting creative with its highly anticipated third studio album, which the band hopes to record this fall and release next summer.
Davis admits fears abound within the band regarding its next project. He said there are too many examples of one-album wonders for this quartet to take things lightly. That means there are plenty of goals left in this band’s future.
“If there was something with the next album I was afraid of, it would be that it was viewed as a fad kind of music,” Davis said. “We’re all in this for the long run, and that’s why we took the grass-roots route in the first place, to establish a good fan base.
“So I’d hate to have us fall off the face of the planet. That’s kind of one of my worst fears.”