Somewhere in the midst of the Phillies giving us one coronary after another, we lost track of the fact that we went to the Factory a couple Saturdays ago to check out a couple of our favorite live acts, Paramore (MySpace) and Paper Route (MySpace). It's not that the show was forgettable; we just get a little crazy around Phillies playoff time.

Having seen both bands before, we had a good idea of what to expect from them. And we knew to expect a packed Electric Factory, so we made sure we got there early enough to get a decent vantage point in the balcony. The Factory itself, by the way, continued its seemingly never-ending pattern of suckitude, with the female "security guard" basically molesting Editor Jill, apparently believing that Jill might attempt to smuggle some contraband into the venue in her bra—the front part of her bra. It got us thinking, if a male security had done that, it would have been no-brainer sexual harassment. But is it really that much less harassing for a female security guard to do it? What if the female security guard was a lesbian? What if the concertgoer was also a lesbian? But we digress.

The drawback (apart from being groped) to arriving just after the doors opened was that it meant we had to suffer through The Swellers. Apparently, Paramore's Hayley Williams is a big fan of these guys, but we really don't see how anyone could be a big fan of them. To us, they sounded like a really, really untalented version of The Starting Line—and we're not huge Starting Line fans to begin with. Mercifully, The Swellers only played for about a half hour, but that's still thirty minutes of our life we wouldn't mind having back.

Fortunately, Paper Route got the good music going in short order. As we'd suspected, Paper Route's complex, heavily arranged sound worked much better in the large setting of the Factory than in the cramped space at Kung Fu Necktie, where we'd previously seen them. And the band made full use of the space—including bassist Chad Howat climbing up to the balcony at one point—and delivered a very solid set of music from their full-length album Absence. Paper Route is continuing to support Paramore through the end of this year, and should be on the road for a headlining tour of smaller venues in early 2010. We suspect there will be significantly more people at those shows than the three dozen or so who saw them at Kung Fu Necktie back in July—and this is a band that deserves more attention.

Finally came Paramore, and we got exactly what we expected: a whole lot of energy. Paramore feeds energy to the crowd, and then feeds off the energy from the crowd, as well as any band out there today. They may not be the best songwriters or musicians out there—which isn't to imply that they're bad or untalented by any stretch—but their on-stage work ethic is infectious. It's easy to rip "emo" music, but for what it's worth, Paramore represents the best of the plethora of "three chords and angsty lyrics" bands out there today. It doesn't hurt that Williams has some incredible pipes, so her vocals never come across as whiney or immature. Paramore has improved their songwriting significantly over time, and their live performance has also improved since we first saw them, a couple years ago. If Paramore continues to grow and improve in the studio and on stage, their fanbase—which is already sizable and enthusiastic—will only grow. Maybe one day, it might even include "emo" haters.

Filed in Arts & Events and tagged concerts, Electric Factory, events, Hayley Williams, Josh Farro, JT Daly, music, Paper Route, Paramore, paramore, Phillyist Playlist, Playlist Rewind, reviews, The Swellers