Polite punk with a dash of pop: welcome to the middle of the road

Paramore
O2, Dublin
**

As this punk-pop band from Franklin, Tennessee, are going through their paces in front of a capacity – mostly teenage – crowd, and as the exceptional light show once again dazzles the eyes with red, blue, green and strobe-effect white, a few thoughts pop up.

Is it possible to make generic interesting? How do you package something that is safe, cosy and ineffectual in a way that makes you think it isn’t? And how, for goodness sake, can you deny the obvious levels of pleasure and passion from fans in the face of such limitations? Can the people who bought Paramore’s most recent (self-titled) album – making it number one in the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico – be completely and utterly wrong?

Welcome to Homogenised Music Central. You can’t miss it – it’s in the middle of the road, where Pavlovian responses are the norm and the offspring of Stepford moms and dads have little else to do except accede to the wishes of those in control.

And make no mistake about it – Paramore are in control, and in charge of Paramore is the flame-haired, pint-sized ball of energy that is Hayley Williams.

Williams owns the O2 stage like few other performers I have seen on it in the past several years. The other two primary band members, bass player Jeremy Davis and lead guitarist Taylor York (three other musicians – a drummer and two guitar players – are on stage for touring purposes only) might throw a shape or two as the evening wears on, but if it wasn't for Williams's unfailingly polite connection with the audience, there would be zero personal contact. (Williams's personal touch gets a bit ripe, however – at one point she describes the audience collective singalongs as "miraculous".)

What connects much more than the music – which throughout is as formulaic as it gets – is Williams’s fervent belief in the shared communality of the live gig experience. She’s a bona fide trooper with an A+ in public relations – we look forward to her solo career with equal amounts of cynicism and caution.