Hayley Williams Releases Surprise Album FLOWERS for VASES / descansos

Hayley Williams released a surprise new album titled FLOWERS for VASES / descansos on Friday via Atlantic Records. The album follows the Paramore frontwoman’s debut three-part solo album Petals for Armor and acoustic EP Petals for Armor: Self-Serenades.

Every song on FLOWERS for VASES / descansos was fully written and played by Williams for the first time in her career. The new album also includes a new version of “Find Me Here.” The track was originally released on Petals for Armor: Self-Serenades, but receives a new verse in the revised rendition. The latest album is stripped-down and intimate, mostly featuring guitar, piano and vocals with few embellishments before exploding on the finale track “Just A Lover,” the only song to feature a full-band sound.

Williams said of the album in a statement:

This isn’t really a follow-up to Petals For Armor. If anything, it’s a prequel, or some sort of detour between parts 1 and 2 of Petals. The meaning of the album as a whole is maybe entirely different from diving into each song in particular. For me, there’s no better way to tackle these individual subjects other than holistically. The ways I’ve been given time (forcibly, really) to stew on certain pains long enough to understand that they in fact, need to be released … indefinitely. I may never have been offered such a kindness; an opportunity to tend to the seeds I’d planted, to harvest, and to weed or prune what is no longer alive, in order to make space for the living. I wrote and performed this album in its entirety. That’s a career first for me. I recorded it at my home in Nashville, the home at which I’ve resided since Paramore released After Laughter. 2020 was really hard but I’m alive and so my job is to keep living and help others to do the same.

Stream FLOWERS for VASES / descansos here, and check out the album artwork and tracklist below.

FLOWERS for VASES / descansos Album Artwork:

FLOWERS for VASES / descansos Tracklist:
01. First Thing To Go
02. My Limb
03. Asystole
04. Trigger
05. Over Those Hills
06. Good Grief
07. Wait On
08. KYRH
09. Inordinary
10. HYD
11. No Use I Just Do
12. Find Me Here
13. Descansos
14. Just A Lover