Paramore's Williams gets the fans going

Judging from Saturday's sold-out Paramore show at the Electric Factory, buoyant 20-year-old frontwoman Hayley Williams knows the best way to deal with pressure: Warm up those formidable pop-punk-plus pipes and belt it out before an enthusiastic full house.

She can negotiate ballads just fine - the Franklin, Tenn., quintet began the encore set seated, doing the new "Misguided Ghosts" acoustically - but Williams seems most comfortable whipping her thin body about, wailing in a sometimes tremulous yet always controlled voice, shaking her straight (now blond) locks to the band's melodic post-emo riff-beat-wow assaults.

For a breather, she revels in the spotlight, triumphantly conducting the overwhelmingly teenage crowd in sing-along power choruses, as on the anthemic "That's What You Get."

The Saturday prior, Paramore returned to the road after a week of postponed shows due to Williams' ill-timed laryngitis - at the start of a long tour promoting their just-out third album. Brand New Eyes debuted at No. 2, denied the top spot by an older vocal blaster, Barbra Streisand. But it did shove the latest Mariah Carey disc to third. The album arrived with much expectation, a solid growth record that many hope will boost the five-year-old band to the next level. Industry wags have even singled out the previously flame-haired Hayley as "the Great Orange Hope."

Paramore spent the summer opening No Doubt's reunion tour, affording Williams a chance to study the winning Gwen Stefani: ever-confident onstage but integrating herself within the group, learning long ago to resist inordinate focus and subsequent internal band tension. Those are things Paramore dealt with after lengthy touring for their breakthrough album, Riot!

In this airtight band, drummer Zac Farro shifts from lurching hard core to pop fills to a recurring disco hi-hat drive, while his guitarist brother Josh spikes his catchy chording with octave chiming. (Clever bunch, too, tacking a verse of At the Drive-In's thematically compatible "One Armed Scissor" to their "Here We Go Again.") But Williams deserves the attention, a natural, whether hurling through "Misery Business" - still Paramore's best, a near-perfect 2007 single - or the new closer, "Brick By Boring Brick."