Not actually released as an album, but as a crop of individual solo tracks accessible via her website, the Paramore American singer’s mass drop of singles, if presented in no particular order, still constitutes a coherent, collection of classy, clever indie-pop numbers. With Paramore having wrapped up their contract with Atlantic Records, Williams has mischievously released these new tunes through her own new label named Post Atlantic, via Secretly Distribution, and worked on them with longtime Paramore touring members Brian Robert Jones, Joey Howard and Daniel James. There’s catchy tunes and caustic wit across a range of styles from the walking pace Kill Me onwards (“Eldest daughters never miss their chances / To learn the hardest lessons again and again/ Carrying my mother's mother's torment/ I think I'm where the bloodline ends/ I'll never do the right thing again.”) Mirtazapine (released slightly earlier) big sound, catchy 90s-style indie rock, but also a love letter to antidepressants . Glum is an indie-pop song about loneliness, but in which she oddly, and perhaps satirically (of the pop genre itself) moderates her voice with some smoky, disorted vocal presets. Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party is a particular standout, beginning with wistful piano, but laced with bitchy rapier wit (“I'll be the biggest star at this racist country singer’s bar”) and other sharp lines are in the Nashville -influenced Americana of Whim (“Sunshine through the curtain, music in my head / Still be singing to you long after we're dead”). Ice On My OJ brings in a familiar Paramore chorus and dynamically veers between talky mischief and frantic screams, while the gentler, and rathe beautiful Zizzou references the Wes Anderson film character with an extended metaphor as well as a quote from Megan Thee Stallion: “I keep telling you the water's fine / You show up in a scuba suit/ So come out to the deeper side/ We could be like team Zissou … Keep telling you the water's fine / Megan called it "Monster Soup" / But the monsters are you and I/ We don't have anything to lose.” A rich soup of random but strong, clever songs, served up in no particular order, in a indefinable shuffle-form sort-of LP, rather than actually being one. Out on Post Atlantic / hayleywilliams.net
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