Paramore goes ethereal with new album ‘This is Why’

its customers,” Leung said. He admires the glass ceiling that brings copious amounts of natural light into the room, creating a perfect ambiance when doing work. In addition, the green plants mixed with the rustic interior make the shop’s environment even more comforting.

”Iron and Kin is the perfect place to chill. I would come back here as a quick pit stop during my day and just chill here,” Leung said. Iron and Kin is more than just a coffee shop. It’s a community of people that values diversity, kinship and coffee. As students at the 5Cs, we, too, are part of the Claremont community. Despite our extra-curricular activities or strenuous course load that makes it difficult to get off campus, the college experience also includes exploring the surrounding neighborhood and its offerings.

Let Iron and Kin be the excuse to get an extra dose of caffeine before the day ends or give your brain a break from work. Whether it’s venturing off campus to seek a new study spot, meeting with friends, or just taking a mindfulness stroll, there’s no place better to do that than at Iron and Kin. 5/5 stars.

GIFFORDS: ‘On a mission’

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Communities Act to become law. The film also centered around Giffords’ uplifting, strong spirit despite the challenges she faced in the aftermath of the shooting. Erspamer decided to produce the film, which has greatly impacted her personal life, because of the type of person that Giffords is.

“We learn from telling other people’s stories and we learn from watching other people’s stories,” Erspamer said at the panel. “Gabby is an incredibly courageous, resilient and powerful, powerful woman, and I think having the opportunity to tell her story has been, in so many ways, life-changing for me. It really has helped me. I get up every morning and I think about Gabby and I think, ‘just keep moving forward,’ and I complain a lot less now than I did.” that I take for granted, and I think that sort of constant, consistent commitment to incremental progress is the reason why we’re going to advocate for the country, ultimately,” Ambler said.

Giffords’ perseverance while dealing with such an injury was also inspiring to Ambler, a feat that he believes extends beyond her public service.

Giffords said that to get through the struggle, she had to keep fighting, which she recommends that other people try to do as well.

“For me, it has been really important to move ahead [and] to not look back. I hope others are inspired to keep moving forward no matter what,” Giffords said.

Amanda Macias Schreiber PO ’26, who attended both the screening and the panel, found this attitude and Giffords’ passion for ending gun violence to be motivating.

“I thought the film did a great job of humanizing the issue by sharing the story of one person and really getting into her heart and strength overcoming this enormous obstacle,” Schreiber said. “This screening did reinvigorate me to continue advocating, fighting and moving forward.”

“We finished the first day in the studio and listened back to the music and … it simultaneously sounds like everything we’ve ever loved and nothing we’ve ever done before ourselves,” Paramore’s lead singer, Hayley Williams, said of their new album “This is Why.”

In case you’re one of the five people at the Claremont Colleges who haven’t heard of Paramore, here’s your primer. Paramore is an American rock band founded in 2005. Since then, they have released six studio albums to massive commercial success, fluctuating in genres, styles and band members. Their latest project has three of Paramore’s eight total historical members. As you can imagine, there is no end to the drama the band has gone through, and it isn’t hard to find people who you can talk about that sort of stuff with for hours on end. But that’s not what I’m here to do. I’m here to talk about why Paramore’s new aesthetic blend may be their best yet and how it cements them in rock canon as one of the best and most resilient groups, who inexorably moves further toward musical surprises.

And where else to start that conversation but the title track?

“This is Why” opens with a very Radio Head-esque sound, with cool baselines and casual drums paired with toned down guitar and some light maracas. Williams opens with “if you have an opinion / maybe you should shove it,” perhaps one of the more badass starts to an album I’ve heard in a while. The sound is robust, bright and tightly controlled –– echoing back to much of Paramore’s discography. It’s classic and beautiful, a reminder of why we were looking forward to this album so much.

“Big Man Little Dignity” opens in ethereal fashion — a soothing bass clarinet and soaring wooden flute complement the traditional Paramore sounds of tight drums and catchy guitar riffs. This is the first song on the album that starts the aesthetic shift that “This is Why” represents more broadly — a turn to the ethereal and vague. Williams’ lyrics provide a mocking and yet despairing critique of men in power: “you’re so smooth, it’s pitiful / know you can get away with anything / so that’s exactly what you do.” The ever-changing tone of the song enables Williams to be so dynamic with her theming, altering the way her words can be interpreted with each new chord.

“You First” starts with a rolling uncomfortable guitar line and a punky feeling that pushes you forward into the song. The pre-chorus transitions back to their ethereal aesthetic with smooth guitar arpeggios fluttering over the traveling bass. Paramore lyrically embraces a sort of punk skepticism, “everyone is a bad guy / and there’s no way to know who’s the worst.”

Any fans of The Police will note how familiar this song sounds — Paramore members are experts at drawing influence from so many parts of rock. This track shows off Paramore’s ability to match lyrics with the vibe of a song — the punk environment they foster on “You First” primes the listener to be ready to question everything around them and be fiercely angry at the same time. “Karma’s gonna come for all of us ... and I hope she comes for you first.”

“Crave” is possibly the most ethereal track on the album, opening with loose drumming and gorgeous sliding guitar chords. Williams flows through her lyrics, a sharp shift from the harsh hits she delivered in tracks like “This is Why” and “The News.” Williams lyrically reflects on a perfect moment and a simple time, “just for a second it all felt simple / I’m already missing it.” Her voice is effortlessly expressive — you can hear the pained emotion in every chorus.

Thanks to tracks like these, “This is Why” is a great album. Each tune is controlled, specific and independent — starting and finishing a journey and giving the listener something new to pay attention to. The project moves Paramore in a new and exciting aesthetic direction towards a more vague, open and ethereal sound. This new sound enables them to question more complex themes, ones they don’t necessarily have easy answers to, and to add more and more layers to their already deep musical composition.

The album addresses a variety of themes from love to confidence to hatred to nostalgia, reflecting Paramore’s lyrical brilliance and flexibility. At every point, each song has at least three or four interesting layers going on, ensuring the album is easy to listen to over and over again – you’ll always find something new.

The album is both quintessentially Paramore and simultaneously brand new. It’s the perfect representation of how beautifully flexible the group can be and of the fantastic product that so often results from that power.

Rowan Gray CM ’26 is from Sharon, Massachusetts. He wants you to know that all Oxford commas in this piece were violently deleted by his copy editors.

“I think something that amazes … me about was not necessarily when she’s up on a stage or when she’s in front of a large group of people or whether the Presidential Medal of Freedom is being hung around her neck,” Ambler said at the panel. “It’s all of the little things. It’s the thousands of hours that she puts into speech therapy just to be able to find the next word [and] the thousands of hours that she puts into physical therapy to be just a little bit stronger.”

According to Ambler, this strength didn’t just lead to a recovery that doctors called miraculous, it also is one of the primary reasons for the mission and success of the nonprofit Giffords.

“[I saw] somebody put so much effort into something

Throughout her recovery, Giffords has developed new passions and hobbies, which helped her get through the rough patches.

“It can be so difficult,” Giffords said. “Losses hurt. Setbacks are hard, but I tell myself, ‘move ahead.’ I’m finding joy in small things: rid[ing] my bike, playing the French horn, going to the gym, laughing with friends. The small things add up.”

Most of all, she has made sure to never give up hope and always fight for what’s right with the people around her.

“I chose to make a new start, to move ahead [and] to not look back,” Giffords said. “I’m relearning so many things — how to walk, how to talk — and I’m fighting to make the country safer. I learned that when people care for each other and work together, progress is possible [and] a better world is possible, but change doesn’t happen overnight, and we can’t do it alone. Join me. Let’s move ahead together.”