With Petals For Armor Williams reclaims her story and starts anew: she is her own saviour.
A record that perfectly proves how much strength is in vulnerability, it’s undeniably Hayley’s most powerful move yet.
Though it contains mere hints of the scrappy rocker we’ve watched for 15 years, Petals Of Armor is the bold signature of someone who is more than ready to show off different sides of herself—yet has nothing left to prove to anyone.
While there's certainly an audible sense of collaboration on Petals for Armor, it's Williams' ability to turn her dark, personal moments into anthems of survival that stick with you.
Petals for Armor could never have been a Paramore album. It's not just the sonic depth and breadth of it, the way the production skims along styles and sheds them as effortlessly as Hayley Williams' hooks translate to every genre she tries. It's the uncompromising, scalding, open rawness of it.
With her first solo effort, Williams has delivered a rich and warm album filled with experimentation but never grandeur. It's brutally honest, yet comforting and displays the freedom and catharsis she felt via making it.
Petals for Armor doesn’t offer up an easy redemptive arc towards happiness; it is a Herculean effort to pull yourself out of depression. But in letting us in on that effort, Williams has created something special.
While Williams has no plans to leave her Paramore family just yet, Petals for Armor is a musically strong, emotionally vulnerable album that finds her standing confidently as an artist in her own right.
It’s the sound of an artist blooming into some of the best music of her career.
On Petals for Armor Williams is in full blossom, telling her story without requiring our permission.
Petals for Armor feels, at once, like it could be stadium-ready pop, but rarely does she contain her sonic wanderlust long enough to make something that sounds like pure bubblegum.
Overall Petals For Armor proves that Hayley Williams, with her singing as sharp as ever, is no one trick pony and is willing to push the envelope outside of her comfort zone for a sophisticated and sensual debut album that should play well to the masses.
The elaborate intricacy of writing and production ay be a lot to take in for all but devoted fans. Freed of the strictures of her band set up, Williams seems to almost want to overcomplicate things. Thankfully, her gorgeous and expressive voice is an absolute delight throughout, shifting from breathy intimacy to acrobatic exuberance.
Even as it gets more of a pulse going in a new wave direction, Petals for Armor is a disappointingly derivative debut.
What Petals for Armor thinks is stripped-down and intimate actually sounds unfinished and undercooked musically. Williams’s great songwriting remains intact, even if sometimes she’s still awkward confronting her past, but the music here is mostly boring and basic.
#2 | / | Drowned in Sound |
#3 | / | Chorus.fm |
#6 | / | DIY |
#9 | / | Riff Magazine |
#11 | / | SPIN |
#12 | / | The FADER |
#14 | / | Dork |
#15 | / | Entertainment Weekly |
#17 | / | NME |
#18 | / | The A.V. Club |