Carnival of Soul

“Second chances, they don’t ever matter, people never change,” Hayley Williams sang, decisively, at the wizened age of 18. Since “Misery Business” propelled her power-emo band Paramore to stardom, the ever-evolving singer and songwriter has proved that maxim wrong over and over again. Case in point: Though it remains a much-requested fan favorite, the band no longer performs the song live. As Williams wrote on her Tumblr five years ago, “I haven’t related to it in a very long time.”

The decision by Williams, now 31, to release the searing, knotty “Petals for Armor” — her first album under her own name — also represents a change, a kind of long-deferred second chance. When she was a teen vocal powerhouse and major labels wanted to mold her into the next Avril Lavigne, Williams insisted that she and her band were a package deal. After her parents divorced, she’d longed to be a part of something; her band was more than a collection of musicians.

But “Cinnamon,” a skittering single off “Petals for Armor,” is an attempt to make peace — and maybe even have some fun — with Williams’s recurring fears of isolation and loneliness. She has called the song an ode to her current home, the first she’s ever lived in alone. (Between “Cinnamon” and Fiona Apple’s “Fetch the Bolt Cutters,” female artists making challenging but therapeutic music that reimagines domestic space as a place of creative experimentation are certainly having a moment!) The song’s chorus is a wordless primal yowl, the kind of noise you’d make only when home alone. As she sings with a convincing bravura, “I’m not lonely, baby — I am free.”

“Petals for Armor” comes from a period of intense questioning, when Williams’s short marriage to her longtime partner Chad Gilbert was ending, and she found herself wondering if her solo itch would jeopardize the future of Paramore. (“I came close to stifling my creative process because I didn’t want to live up to those expectations of what it looks like when a female leaves a band and makes a project on her own,” Williams — a descendant of ’90s alt-rock who’s certainly seen No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” video — said recently.)

In therapy and bouts of free-writing, Williams dug deep and unearthed demons. And so, like the striking music videos accompanying the record, “Petals for Armor” conjures the atmosphere of a psychological horror movie in which the call is coming from inside the house. In the video for “Simmer,” Williams sprints through a sunless forest; the monster pursuing her is an amorphous red light that the song suggests is her long-repressed “rage.”

“Simmer” is the operative word here. Though Paramore’s most beloved songs feature firework choruses that showcase the pyrotechnic heights of Williams’s voice, many of the songs on “Petals for Armor” snake instead, like a long, slow-burning fuse. Some of them eventually provide the relief of catharsis — as in the Björk-like cries that enliven “Sudden Desire” — while others, among them “Leave It Alone” and “My Friend,” get stuck in droning, monochrome loops that evoke late-period Radiohead.

Williams divided the 15-song “Petals for Armor” into three EPs that she has released in installments. Each has its own mood and thematic focus: The brooding, hypnotic Part I is focused on past trauma; the slightly more propulsive Part II confronts the work of self-care and rebuilding (she released a playful “workout video” set to the buoyant “Over Yet”); and the sultry, R&B-tinged Part III embraces the promise of a new, healthier romantic relationship.

The lyrics are often vivid and sometimes startlingly candid: “I got what I deserved,” she sings on the bouncy “Dead Horse,” “I was the other woman first.” Elsewhere, on the mournful “Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris,” which features backing vocals from the indie all-stars boygenius, Williams conjures poignant imagery:

Think of all the wilted women
Who crane their necks to reach a window
Ripping all their petals off just ’cause
“He loves me now, he loves me not.”

As a solo artist, Williams is emboldened to both embrace and interrogate femininity as never before, and to admit to herself that, even if the male-dominated punk scene caused her to internalize some sexism and write some sanctimonious lyrics in the past, it’s not too late to forgive herself, or to change.

“Dead Horse” begins with a caveat, presumably for the “Petals” producer and Paramore member Taylor York: “It took me three days to send you this, but uh, sorry, I was in a depression, but I’m trying to come out of it now.” On one hand this is an admirable peek into the ways mental health can affect the creative process. But tacked onto the beginning of one of her album’s most accessible songs, it feels like a sign of ambivalence toward, even a retreat from, the record’s most straightforwardly poppy moments. Many of these songs sparkle with insight and the daring of a shape-shifting vocalist, but a handful assume too readily that maturity and seriousness are only achieved through dour restraint.

Still, as she and her band proved on Paramore’s excellent 2017 record “After Laughter,” Williams was already a pro at packing complex emotions and perceptive wisdom into bright, technicolor pop-rock songs. Tracks like “Hard Times” and “Forgiveness” were no less sophisticated for inviting full-throated singalongs.

By the end of “Petals for Armor,” she seems to have arrived at a similar conclusion. “Sugar on the Rim” expands the record’s palette with a fun, new-wave sheen and a hint of a churning techno beat. Even better is the crystalline groove of “Pure Love,” which ties its succinct self-knowledge to an absolute rocket-ship of a chorus: “If I want your love, got to open up.” Sounds like she’s giving herself a second chance.

Hayley Williams
“Petals for Armor”
(Atlantic)