Paramore's Latest One of Year's Best

Paramore’s third album will likely enter the charts at No. 1—and it deserves to. Not only is it “the group’s best record yet,” Brand New Eyes is “one of 2009’s most exhilarating releases,” writes Jonah Weiner for Slate. “That sense of exhilaration” is there because of “a reassuring, masterfully executed blast of the familiar,” including “a series of stadium-size vistas, full of cathartic rushes and sudden, dramatic plummets.”

A few songs “are exemplary throwbacks to the punk-flecked pop of Blink-182 and Avril Lavigne (with one major difference: Those artists often sang in stylized whines whereas” frontwoman Hayley Williams' “intonation is strong and firm-footed),” Weiner writes. Williams sings about the typical “teen-angst” woes, but—perhaps thanks to her Christian roots—she’s always resilient, and “she doesn't screech or hyperventilate. She doesn't moan. She's tough. Hysteria is for boys.” (More Paramore stories.)