Paramore @ The SSE Hydro, Glasgow, 20 Jan

Given the hysteria surrounding Paramore during the mid-00s US emo explosion – and of course, all the copycats and diehards that still follow them to this day – it's no surprise they're playing a room the size of The Hydro. But the room itself appears to be their undoing tonight.

The lumbering low-end boom of the drums engulfs pretty much every available space of the overhead void inside this landlocked UFO. And as a result, you're lucky to hear any more than two or three members of the expanded seven-piece line-up playing together at any one time. Even the punchiest of songs is often rendered a muddy, limping impression of itself, and thus for the most part the vibe is squarely sucked out.

But let's not be too hard on the band themselves. Even if you can't exactly hear it, you can tell they're getting stuck in. Their joyful and endlessly energetic leader Hayley Williams scales heights with her voice that only radio telescopes could detect, so has little difficulty cutting through tonight's mush. Meanwhile, drummer Zac Farro and guitarist Taylor York carry the musical weight the best they can, hammering out solid efforts on songs such as recent disco-banger Hard Times – from last year's After Laughter – and the mass singalongs of That's What You Get and Misery Business (aided tonight by some pretty impressive crowd participation onstage).

At best, you hear enough of a song's intro or chorus to identify it, and that alone seems enough for a small pocket of people down in front to go wild, but they'd likely be equally excited if they heard these tunes off someone's phone, amplified by a crisp packet. For everyone else sitting around politely though, it seems that the spark never quite ignites.