She rarely reaches for the sharp, emotive peaks of her multi-octave range, but instead approaches songs softly. The extended vowels on “First Thing to Go” glide as if she just sighed them into being. But with only an acoustic guitar and piano to hide behind, here her voice sounds refreshed. On Petals for Armor it was chopped to bits, used as syncopated rhythm rather than as a central force within the album’s bubbly melodies. Williams’ voice is undoubtedly the standout feature of her band, both husky and gentle, dangerous yet warm. Williams doesn’t innovate on the basics, but for a singer who has long hidden anger behind blown-out reverb and larger-than-life synths, her pared-back instrumentation feels like a modest yet purposeful reset. Her melodies, both on the guitar and on her maudlin, muted piano, are unpretentious and unadorned, their minimal flourishes reflective of her isolated environment. The acoustic finger picking on “Wait On” and “HYD” feels immediately familiar, as if pulled from a book of folk standards. Her choices here reveal a songwriter more indebted to the arpeggiated guitar of a ’70s folk singer like Sibylle Baier than the power chords of mall punk.

By contrast, Williams wrote and performed FLOWERS for VASES entirely alone. In spirit and execution, Petals for Armor felt like an extension of her work with her band: Paramore guitarist Taylor York helped compose almost all of the songs on the album, while its uptempo melodies picked up where After Laughter left off. If Petals for Armor danced on the graves of her failed romances, FLOWERS for VASES revisits their tombstones with a mournful glance at what had been.įLOWERS for VASES is essentially Williams’ first true solo endeavor. The resulting collection, FLOWERS for VASES / descansos, paints a more modest picture of heartbreak. In fits and starts, she started combing through songs she had written over the years-some dating back as far as Paramore’s 2017 release After Laughter-piecing together recordings that continued the healing narrative.

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