Hayley Williams combines vulnerability and bravery on ‘PETALS FOR ARMOR I,’ the first part of a larger project

Hayley Williams has always been a force to be reckoned within the music world. You can’t just be the leading force of a band, of a pillar of the mid-00’s emo boom, like Paramore, go back to the drawing board not just once but twice, and not come out feeling like you’ve always been holding on to some kind of special power. Yet for all the praise and invincible status we’ve attached to Hayley Williams the musician, it has become rather easy to sidestep the sensitive territory of Hayley Williams as a person, as well as everything that involves spending time in order to better understand her as this everyday, normal, not-at-all-invincible human being.

ALBUM REVIEW: Le Butcherettes deliver anthemic punk on the dualism of struggle and strength on “bi/MENTAL”

The moment it all clicks into place for me comes midway through the album, on a track called “in/THE END.” This, itself, is an irony onto itself, putting a song with that title smack into the middle of the tracklisting. But the real moment of truth, during my second full listen of the album, happens as the song transitions from its modest opening stretches — a filtered harmonization, between two voices made to sound somewhat childlike, backed by soft distorted guitar and light keyboard, already an anomaly among the album’s guitar-heavy slant backed by deep synths — into a boldly expansive mid-tempo rock ballad. It’s unexpected, but fits in entirely with what Le Butcherettes do as a whole on bi/MENTAL.

REVIEW: Deafheaven aren’t showing any signs of slowing down on ‘Ordinary Corrupt Human Love’

When a band like Deafheaven produces and releases an album like Sunbather, they become a group you simply must pay attention to. And when such a band releases as worthy a follow up as New Bermuda, it becomes rather difficult to not anticipate further releases from them with giddy excitement. For while their game-changing first album had them explore and expand every nook and cranny of the blackgaze subgenre they became associated with, the succeeding release had them inject healthy amounts of speed and thrash metal, ultimately producing a black-as-molasses release that was as exhilarating as it was brooding. Both were great releases that showed how the band refused to stay within the confines of any genre. They also demonstrated the group’s natural aptitude for experimentation. And if this latest record is any indication, the group has only gotten better at furthering their sound.

REVIEW: Theresa Wayman’s solo debut, ‘LoveLaws,’ explores love’s powerful nature

Love can be quite the concept. Probably everybody would like to be swept up and held in its warm embrace as you soak in all the euphoria coming from that cradle. But nothing prepares you for when love decides let you go. There will always be the pain that comes with such an outcome, and feeling like you’re in a world of hurt. Maybe you want to give up on love, because you’re so sure you’ll never experience that level of goodness again.

Theresa Wayman, one of the front-women of the L.A.-based art rock outfit Warpaint, definitely feels your pain and understands where you’re coming from; love truly can be swampy, unfavorable territory. Buuut… it also isn’t. And to get to such a conclusion, sometimes you have to look (like, really look) at what love is, and what it can be. Which just so happens to the approach Wayman takes in forming the ten songs that make up LoveLaws, her first album as a solo artist, under the moniker of TT.

REVIEW: Jordaan Mason explores identity, community, and mental health in a depressing, confusing time on “Earth to Ursa Major”

There’s a moment two-thirds through Jordaan Mason’s earth to ursa major, on the reprise of “it does not get better,” that acts as reiteration, reversal, and progression all at once. The first “it does not get better” on the album is filled with uncertainty, a plea for companionship in a time where “it just gets heavier” the more time passes and the more dreadful circumstances the world piles on. But the reprise of this song culminates in a twist of the refrain to a more hopeful slant: “if it does not get better / at least we’ll be together.”