Hayley Williams is undiluted and genre-neutral on ‘Petals For Armour’

If you’re familiar with Hayley Williams, it’s easy to get the sense that she’s wanted to make this album for a while. It feels almost like a continuation of the sound on  After Laughter, Paramore’s last album, just with the moodiness turned up and the tempo turned down. While this album maintains the authenticity and originality of its predecessor, Petals for Armor is vastly more flawed.

Williams’ raw, lyrical honesty is just as present and even more stark than in her previous releases, and it’s one of her great strengths. The delicious darkness of opening track ‘Simmer’ is a beautiful example: “Rage is a quiet thing,” she muses in its first verse, dwelling with careful detail and nuance on the tumult of the last few years of depression and post-divorce life. 

Her relief that “I am free… finally” on ‘Cinnamon’ seems, then, not only to apply to her divorce 

Throughout Petals For Armour, there are many moments where her lyrics feel so pointed they almost hurt. Over the delicate opening of ‘Dead Horse’, she sings a meek apology: “it took three days to send you this… I was in a depression. I’m trying to come out of it now”. 

Elsewhere, she admits to “eating breakfast in the nude” (‘Cinnamon’), craving the feeling of a man’s hands “going down” (‘Sudden Desire’) and separates herself from the PG-rated lyrics of her Paramore days by scattering her own songs with profanity. Her relief that “I am free… finally” on ‘Cinnamon’ seems, then, not only to apply to her divorce. Hayley Williams is not diluting her thoughts, and it’s an approach that suits her well. 

Tracks like ‘Leave It Alone’ and ‘Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris’ simply meander with no sense of direction

Underneath those lyrics is a musical landscape just as assured as the words on top of the chords and rhythms. The understated, intricate guitar lines and occasional bass twangs form a sound that is ‘genre-neutral’, as Paramore has declared themselves in recent times. On paper, it sounds intriguing, and while the organic feel to it is refreshing and incomparable to other modern music, it doesn’t match up to its promises.

While Williams is known for songs that bounce, or at the very least cruise, along, tracks like ‘Leave It Alone’ and ‘Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris’ simply meander with no sense of direction. Clearly, she knows how she wants to make music, but clings onto a set formula a bit too tightly -especially in the first two-thirds of the record. 

‘Over Yet’ is a slice of sugary 80s pop that does for the album what love triangles do for YA novels: it acts as an overwrought and cliched attempt to make a wider body of work a bit more exciting

Nevertheless, Williams does in parts deviate from her own template, but with mixed results. The loftier ‘Pure Love’ is a success, taking a jauntier and catchier diversion from the downtempo tracks preceding it. 

Other times, when she tries something more upbeat, the results are more grating than catchy. On a couple of songs, she tries to hammer home that she likes the 80s but seems very, very insistent on us knowing just how much of a fan she is. ‘Over Yet’ is a slice of sugary 80s pop that does for the album what love triangles do to a YA novel: it acts as an overwrought and cliched attempt to make a wider body of work a bit more exciting.

Towards the end, the arrival of similarly 80s-esque dance track ‘Sugar On The Rim’ can only be described as batty. As the black sheep of Petals for Armor, it makes no sense in the midst of what was shaping up to be a pretty cohesive record. 

Hayley Williams does not usually make bizarre music, but at times, she somehow manages to do so

She very nearly ruins parts of ‘Creepin’ and ‘Sudden Desire’ with oddly jarring pitch-shifted vocals which spoil the organic feel that the rest of the album tries to inspire. These weaker moments feel like miniature versions of an established musician’s artsy, experimental phase. Hayley Williams does not usually make bizarre music, but at times, she somehow manages to do so. 

There’s a wealth of creativity and detail on offer in Petals For Armor – Hayley Williams is a great musician and there are songs worthy of admiration and plenty of re-listens. She can at least be commended for making something fresh when being generic is such an easy crime to commit.

Ironically for such a delicate sounding record, she is occasionally prone to heavy-handedness. This has clearly been something she needed to make, away from the Paramore brand. I hope it has served her as she wanted. How it served her fans, however, is another question.

We recommend:

• ‘Simmer’