Paramore’s Hayley Williams spent months and months rolling out her debut solo album Petals For Armor, releasing it in three segments and trickling out tracks from each part one or two or three at a time. To be honest, it was an exhausting promotional tactic that didn’t really serve the album, so it’s refreshing that Williams has opted to drop her second solo album with hardly any notice at all. After leaking “My Limb” last week by dropping off a CD at a fan’s home, today she announced that a whole new LP called FLOWERS for VASES / descansos would be out tonight. Now that midnight has struck, the album is here.

Williams recorded FLOWERS for VASES / descansos at home in Nashville with producer and engineer Daniel James, writing and performing every note of music herself for the first time. In contrast to the sinewy, rhythmically charged pop and indie rock of Petals, this one is a largely stripped-back collection of ballads, the most minimal and intimate recordings Williams has ever released. In addition to “My Limb,” the album includes an extended version of her recent EP track “Find Me Here” plus 12 other new songs.

Stream FLOWERS for VASES / descansos below.

A statement from Williams on the project:

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.

FLOWERS for VASES / descansos is out now on Atlantic. Purchase it here.