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Either I'm getting old (in my defense, nobody's getting any younger, right?), it's a trend, or I've only begun to notice it.

I speak of how at concerts I've attended lately each consecutive act at concerts with three bands or more get louder, until the headliner is the loudest. Latest offender? Paramore!

My enjoyment of Paramore isn't soley based on lead singer Hayley Williams being such a fresh-faced cutie of a redhead-though goodness knows that's no detriment. She applies her Christianity in the name of navigating the circuitous vagaries of romance and gender politics (sometimes controversially) with sassy drama to spare and a whip smart band capable of the melodic angularities accompanying her. It's like Taylor Swift's sweetness making a head-on collision with the theatricality of first-album era Panic! At The Disco or at least half of Fall Out Boy's recorded output and, as He can't help but be, the Lord is in the details.

As Williams strutted and pranced about in her leopard print pants and modest yellow tank top with SECURITY emblazoned across her chest (a theological reference or a tribute to the musclemen at the lip of the stage?), the literate, post-teenage angst of her lyrics became nearly a moot point. The girls in the audience could likely relate plenty, and the guys, if they're not all crushing on Williams, could appreciate the musicianship behind her and the energy she spent on stage?

Williams has her stage patter down, but there's a sincerity in her tone that would be tough to fake. When she says she and her bandmates intend to play concerts until they're no longer able, she sounds like just the gal who wants to do it long after producers of Twilight movies want Paramore on their soundtracks (though it surprises me a bit that Williams and her guys took up the offer to be associated with Stephanie Myers' anti-human tales of inter-species romantic dysfunction) and the band graduates from MTV  hotness to VH1 comfortable familiarity. Maybe the songs mean the world to her when she writes them, but Williams looks to be in rock & roll to lead her audience into the same thrills and  hoarse-making excitement she experienced not that may years ago. She's a show woman, one who doesn't revel in moral sludge. God bless her for that. 

The band's set of 15 songs traversed every one they've made a video for and a sprinkling of tunes for which they hadn't. And even if the Paramore newbie friend who drove us there held the opinion that their songs began to sound the same to him after the second number (an opinion I don't share, but to a point, I can understand his point), it was difficult not to be a little mesmerized by the 110% Williams was sweating out as she bounded and climbed about , leading those nearest the stage in choruses and bridges they knew by heart. The blond teen La Hayley picked out of the front of the throng to sing along to the end of the band's '07 breakout single, "Misery Business," played it cool but enthusiastically as she dueted with the spitfire next to her.

But dag, did they have to be so loud that I was seriously regretting not bringing a set of earplugs?

Relient K wasn't quite so loud as the headliners, but were plenty noisy all the same. And in a good way. The pop-punk unit of a decade-plus standing knocked out nine numbers, several known well by the high and middle schoolers comprising much of the crowd. Frontman Matt Thiessen's shaggy blond locks had him looking like late T. Rex leader Marc Bolan without the riotous living. But his band's clever implementation of theological and love life observations with wit and hooks go beyond glammy posturing. And though Thiessen plays guitar just fine, it's his piano that's arguably more compelling. Not only is RK's implementation of the instrument a step beyond the genre in which they began, the way he stands up while pounding out on a stand-up piano may be unique in current rock music. Longtime fans may wish their boys to be headlining, but their grace, humor and humble ferocity made them an apt warm up for the band to follow.

fun. (keep the name lower case with the period at the end-whatever...) played at perhaps half of Paramore's loudness and three-quarters of Relient K's. But what they lacked in decibels they made up for in invention. Comprised of veterans of acts including Anathello, Steel Train and The Format, they've hit upon a uniquely light, hopeful, strange sound. Singer Nate Ruess comes off like equal parts David Johanson and Mika;i.e., he stakes a middle ground between swagger and feyness. Melodies that come off like those of a emo kids auditioning for Glee on their way to a Broadway musical rehearsal. Trumpet, up  to two keyboards and acoustic guitar can figure into some numbers, of which they got a generous seven to play. If their moniker is generic, it's fitting, too. And the brunette on stage with them, Emily, later dueted with Williams on P-more's "The Only Exceptio.,"  If justice prevails, fun. will be spreading more, you know, fun, to greater audiences soon.

Jamie Lee Rake