The use of voice memos in pop music—whether the dry, abstract interludes of Sonic Youth or the litany of voicemails throughout hip hop history—necessarily signals a pause, a moment to listen closely. But rather than a message from a missed connection or words of wisdom from a mentor, the new record from Paramore’s singer Hayley Williams features an intimate dispatch from her home. With her goldendoodle Alf barking in the background, Williams describes, sheepishly, a potential delay in the production process: “Uh, sorry, I was in a depression,” she offers by way of explanation. Trailing off, she adds, “Trying to come out of it now…” That moment of quiet reflection, understated in its depiction of the murkiness inherent to mental health, is an exemplary snapshot from her solo debut, Petals for Armor: intense emotional vulnerability couched in the creature comforts of her homestead.
As Williams describes it, Petals for Armor began as an organic outgrowth of extreme introspection—specifically intensive, full-body therapy through a process called EMDR, in which the person in treatment is asked to recall distressing imagery, processing the experience through sensory input under the guidance of a therapist. For Williams, whose 2017 was marked with both immense highs—the release of Paramore’s triumphantly pop-oriented After Laughter—and definitive lows—a divorce from her partner of 10 years—therapy invoked powerful, at times grotesque imagery of nature. “I started having this vision where I was so gross, covered in dirt and soil, and there were vines and flowers,” she recounted. But that surreal vision became a sign of the inherent power and resilience in a body so outwardly fragile and feminine. Williams began writing songs around the same period, at the advice of a therapist.
On Petals for Armor—originally released as three distinct EPs—Williams traces a meandering, multi-faceted path to recovery, one that might ring familiar to anyone who’s undergone the taxing process of intensive therapy. “Leave It Alone,” one of the earliest songs Williams wrote for the record, addresses the cruelty and irony of loss with chilling clarity: “If you know how to love/Best prepare to grieve,” she sings, her voice tipping upward, knowingly, on the last word of each line. The instrumentation, thick with gently sloping violins, brings to mind a post-rock dirge, invoking the leaden air of mourning without veering into maudlin sap.
On “Rose/Lotus/Violet/Iris,” joined by the disaffected chorus of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus, she conjures a similarly haunted atmosphere, opening with ghostly, swirling vocals dense with delay. But despite the overcast mood, the lyrics hesitantly tell a story of regrowth. Through floral metaphors—“he loves me now, he loves me not,” wilting and blooming—she captures the history of women’s suffering, gesturing to intergenerational trauma without falling into hackneyed, broad-sweeping statements of feel-good empowerment. These hazy moments, which often reveal their depths only upon repeated listen, invoke a careful, considered path to self-love, one that doesn’t avoid its darker corners.