Paramore and Friends Get Together at Municipal Auditorium

“Welcome to the Weirder Side of Nashville” read the T-shirts at the merch table at Paramore’s Art + Friends festival. While The Spin has seen some decidedly weirder stuff than what we saw at Municipal Auditorium on Friday, it was gratifying to watch the first rock band from the Midstate to sell a million copies of an album (2007’s Riot!) put a spotlight on Nashville talent that’s not entirely mainstream (and, refreshingly, not entirely male), as well as highlight other forms of art being practiced here.

We’ve spilled a fair bit of ink over MKAV's Mike Kluge as well as Elephant Gallery's Alex Lockwood, Ellie Caudill and Brett Douglas Hunter, whose art was spread around the concourse between concession stands and booths selling locally made goods, but it was heartwarming to see wide-eyed youths in glitter and sequins rushing to get selfies with those works. What happened on the stage was pretty great, too.

Thanks to looming deadlines and a to-do list that’s as unkillable as Jason Voorhees, we didn’t get down to Municipal until 6:30 p.m., meaning we’d missed out on Nightingail, Liza Anne and Canon Blue. But we were just in time to hear Bully fire off a glove-tight set that sliced through the weird, boomy acoustics of the space. They offered a mighty satisfying overview of their catalog, interspersing early gravel-and-bubblegum cuts like “Brainfreeze” and “Milkman” with gnarlier Feels Like numbers — “I Remember” remains one of our favorite album-opening tracks, and it started the set off right — and songs like “Feel the Same” from 2017’s Losing that make artful use of intense dissonance. The stage lights, which made stage-to-ceiling columns that shone through fog-machine fog, seemed to place the band in a kind of space jail, which frontwoman Alicia Bognanno was thrashing her way out of. At the end of the set, she broke free, putting down her guitar and stalking the stage for a cover of P.J. Harvey’s “Snake.”

The crowd seemed to dig Bully, but their excitement jumped a few levels for the Belmont-born electro-pop outfit COIN. We couldn’t tell you the title of a COIN song without Googling, but we spotted several groups on the floor who seemed to know every word and bounced to the beat with “Is this really happening?” perma-grins. From our perspective, the band's songs don’t really stand out from the pack of competently executed updates on late-’80s pop. But they worked hard to deliver their dramatic hooks and confessional verses between waterfall guitar melodies and synth stabs, drawing on the primal power of rhythm. If COIN is helping introduce new folks to dance music, good on them — that’s a whole super-weird world to explore. Also, props for getting us to dance to a song called “I Don’t Wanna Dance.” (We could’ve guessed the title, but we did Google it.)

Paramore’s set had everything a fan (be they hardcore or casual) could ask for, landing on a sweet spot between the excitement and bombast of other recent arena shows and the intimacy of the best club gigs. During a two-hour run that seemed to go by in a flash, we got a heavy dose of nervy, emotionally complex and supremely danceable tunes from 2017's After Laughter like "Rose Colored Boy," "Caught in the Middle" and "Hard Times." Frontwoman Hayley Williams bounced around the stage like a human pinball as she sang, turning fears and frustrations into rallying cries. Her fishnets-and-T-shirt costume put us in mind of a kid dancing in front of the mirror in their bedroom — an image that speaks to the power of self-discovery.

The band sat in a row for a handful of stripped-down (but still electronic) performances, including a cover of Drake’s “Passionfruit.” A string section joined the group for “26,” a poignant After Laughter cut about rejecting cynicism that we could imagine Alison Krauss taking platinum. There was a pause late in the set where the band played a couple of tunes by drummer Zac Farro’s project Halfnoise, reminding us of the Tom Tom Club segment in Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense.

There were also nods to the ferocious post-emo pop-punk sound that put Paramore on the map. “Still Into You” yielded one of the night’s loudest sing-alongs. That is, until a special retirement ceremony for 2007’s “Misery Business,” an infectious and deliciously cutting song — Paramore's first major hit, written while Williams & Co. were still in high school. Taking a seat on the edge of the stage, Williams explained that the band decided this would be the last time they’d play it “for a very long time.” A song about getting revenge, even by living well, doesn’t jive with the way the adult Williams and her bandmates want to live their lives or use their platform.

“I wonder, in fact, if I was trying to fit in with other cool bands, like maybe we were trying to fit in with Taking Back Sunday,” she said with a laugh. “I guess I’ve taken it upon myself to make a disclaimer every night, because I want people to know where we stand. And I think, to put it really simply, calling someone a whore just isn’t very cool.”

Then Williams gave a toast to bad decisions and the ways they help you grow, as well as to Farro rejoining the band after a six-year absence and guitarist Taylor York for his support during the times when she considered calling it a day. Then, they gave the tune a blistering send-off, pausing midway to pluck three fans out of the crowd to sing the rest.

The festival marked a joyous and cathartic end to an extraordinary phase in the band’s career. The past two years have included a decisive change in style and lineup followed by an enormous tour. And being as open as they’ve chosen to be about what makes you scared, frustrated or depressed is risky and difficult — but as Williams recently told the Scene's Megan Seling, it's really rewarding. As we headed for the exits among the glitter-streaked crowd, singing “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” in unison, we couldn't agree more.