It’s been six years since pop-punk icons turned new wave pop superstars Paramore last turned up on British soil. So it’s really not a shock to note the sky-high level of anticipation and excitement in and around the O2 Arena a good hour before the doors have even opened tonight.
Once everyone is inside, Bloc Party prove to be an inspired choice for support. The London quartet’s scattering post-punk has been a huge influence on Paramore’s recent output, as Hayley Williams admits, and songs from their debut album Silent Alarm, now rightly considered a modern classic, have aged like the finest of wines. Banquet, This Modern Love and, of course, Helicopter are magnificent, while new song High Life shows there is plenty more to Kele Okereke's band than mere nostalgia.
If not needing to rely on nostalgia is true of Bloc Party, then you can multiply that fact by ten for Paramore. Their recent album This is Why might just be the most accomplished of their career, a fact they hammer home by opening the show with two tracks from it, You First and The News, both of which sound amazing and are lapped up by an ecstatic crowd. Their pivot from fizzy, emo punk to classy, groove-fuelled alt-pop in the vein of Talking Heads and New Order suits them brilliantly, and it also appears to make them play classic material that they have, in their words, “reclaimed” (such as That’s What You Get) with a whole new level of maturity.
