The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, February 12, 2020 — 5

Hayley Williams’ Petals for Armor I EP 
is great. If the name is recognizable, some 
might recall Williams’ time as lead singer 
for pop-punk band Paramore. Her debut 
EP is short and sweet, five tracks in all. But 
Petals for Armor I isn’t simply Paramore’s 
punk-angst refashioned for a new decade. 
Williams’ EP combines the signature high-
energy of her trademark songs (think “Still 
into You”) with a dash of weird and a heap 
of fun. 
My time spent listening to Paramore 
was largely defined by the characteristic 
angst of puberty, middle school insecurity 
and chihuahua-style yapping frustrations 
with the world. You know, that pre-teen 
phase spent staring emotionally out the car 
window, pretending to be in a Kelly Clarkson 
music video. Petals for Armor I manages to 
salvage something worthwhile from the 
aforementioned cringe-fest: the satisfaction 
of calling out the world, and revelling a bit in 
our anger. I’m not saying that Paramore isn’t 
cool –– but I know that my own previous 
Paramore-days were decidedly not cool. 
Take the gut-punch opening lines of 
“Leave It Alone”: “Don’t nobody tell me that 
God don’t have a sense of humor / Cause 
now that I want to live, well, everybody 
around me is dyin.” The biting, morbid 
humor recalls that absolutely delicious “take 
that!” of Paramore’s hit “Misery Business” or 
“Brick by Boring Brick.” But “Leave It Alone” 
is quiet. The “umph” of the lyrics doesn’t 
come from the blasting of drums or scream 
of the electric guitar, as with Paramore. 
Rather, Williams’ punch is as sobering as it 
is satisfying. The softly whispered confession 
finds catharsis in that fact that somebody 
finally said it –– no offense, God. 
Williams’ EP, however, isn’t just good 
because it strikes parallels to her classic hits 
with Paramore. In fact, Petals for Armor I is 
good because of how different it is. Williams 
has managed to fashion together sounds, 
feelings and styles in a Frankenstein manner 
that feels more alive than anything that came 
before it (or after). 
Take, for instance, “Creepin,’” a song 
destined to become 2020’s “Monster-Mash.” 
You know all the “Sexy Vampires” will be 
sing-shouting this song at the clubs come 
October 31st. The song is undeniably a bit 
weird, but refreshing. Williams’ imaginative, 
spooky lyrics and her deep drawl strikes a 
vague echo of Marina and the Diamonds 
(think “Primadonna”). Beneath her haunting 
lullaby Williams alludes to the parasites of 

our lives that feast on our misery, “Oh just 
keep suckin’ on the memory of him.” 
“Cinnamon,” strangely enough, can’t help 
but feel reminiscent of Frozen 2’s “Into the 
Unknown.” Don’t worry, they’re nothing 
alike –– except for William’s haunting siren 
call that acts as a wordless chorus. For those 
that haven’t seen Disney’s latest animated 
release, Princess Elsa has a mind-blowingly 
awesome duet with an ominous siren call 
of her own. The song narrowly balances 
between 
comforting 
and 
warm 
(like 
cinnamon) and a tinge hair-raising. Perhaps 
it’s the belly-deep laugh that chases after her 
voice, sitting out-of-sight in the undercurrent 
of the song. 
The opening song, “Simmer,” is the most 
promising of what’s to come with Williams’ 
future solo work. The track starts off with 

layered sounds, adding on top of one another, 
like an engine slowly warming up. Immersed 
throughout are breathy gasps, reminiscent 
of Serge Gainsbourg’s infamously banned-
by-the-Vatican “Je t’aime moi non plus.” 
Here, too, is Williams’ voice unmistakable 
as distinctly Paramore. “Rage is a quiet thing 
/ you think you’ve tamed it / But it’s just in 
lying in wait,” the song shifting dynamically, 
whisper-soft then louder the next minute, 
mimicking the wavering control of the anger 
she sings of. The song features a unique call-
and-response structure, Williams’ singing 
answered by robotic-like voices –– emotion 
versus reason, an unending battle. 
Petals For Armor I presents a seemingly 
irreconcilable contrast, one side soft and 
sweet, the other hard and unyielding. 
Williams’ EP is as beautiful, soft and alluring 
as petals; her words are as biting, assertive 
and powerful as steel armor. Williams has 
a knack for presenting the unexpected, 
twisting and weaving songs that, while 
impossible on paper, take flight with the 
life she breathes into them. Undoubtedly, 
whatever Williams delivers next will 
be just as hypnotic and soul-clenching. 
Whether it’s 13-year-old angst or the wacky 
misadventures of adulthood, I’m sure she 
won’t disappoint.

The weird and the fun 
in Hayley Williams’ EP

My attention span has always 
been questionable — hour-and-
a-half lectures often send me 
scrolling through Twitter for 
a quick “break.” Even when I 
watch films at home, I have to 
be doing something to occupy 
myself for two hours. Focusing on 
a single story or set of characters 
for reviews is a weekly feat that I 
somehow manage to achieve. The 
2020 Oscar Live Action Shorts, 
however, provided a haven that 
I didn’t know existed. Averaging 
around 25 minutes, each short 
developed 
wholly 
individual 
stories and characters in such an 
effective and efficient time frame 
that there was little time to be 
bored.
From the dangerously funny 
lines of “laundry detergent” in 
“NEFTA Football Club” to the 
devastating end of “Saria,” these 
shorts prove that niche concepts 
create better and more engaging 
stories than the more general, 
mainstream messages often seen 
in popular feature-length films. 
Even the two more generic shorts, 
“A Sister” and “The Neighbor’s 
Window,” were able to create 
nuanced experiences for their 
audience. 
Discussing 
the 
female 
experience 
in 
a 
patriarchal 
world has grown in popularity 
in the last few years. Though this 
conversation has been ongoing, 
it has yet to lose its emotional 
strength, especially when films 
like “A Sister” continually provide 
new and relevant perspectives. 
Delphine 
Girard’s 
(“Caverne”) 
newest 
piece 
maintains 
an 
anonymous air — focusing on the 

shared experience of an emergency 
services worker and a woman in 
danger — reminding her audience 
that it could be any one of us sitting 
in that perilous passenger seat. 
The tension builds throughout the 
car ride — characters speaking in 
code, frantically searching for each 
other — creating an environment 
where, at this point, the audience 
really 
only 
cares 
about 
the 
woman’s survival. It’s a new take 
on an old fear that lends itself to a 
compelling story. 
In contrast, “The Neighbor’s 
Window” 
does 
the 
opposite: 
Clearly 
identified 
characters 
are developed and defined by 
the confines of their adjacent 
apartment 
buildings. 
On 
the 
surface, 
“The 
Neighbor’s 
Window” is like any other film 
about marriage and relationships 
as we age. Jealousy flies, wives 
are envious of their younger 
counterparts while husbands are 
yelled at for lounging around the 
house. But what distinguishes “The 
Neighbor’s Window” from other 
family dramas is the relationship 
between the two couples: There 
is no direct contact between the 
two. The audience and the main 
characters only know about this 
second couple because of a lack 
of drapes, the windows of the 
building across the street creating 
small movie panels within the 
viewing screen itself. Eventually, 
as these two parallel lives unfold, 
it 
becomes 
clear 
that 
“The 
Neighbor’s Window” is trying to 
highlight an age-old idea: You’re 
just watching through a window, 
everyone’s life seems perfect, but 
in reality, we’re all going through 
it. It’s a timely message in this age 
of social media. 
The other three nominated 

shorts, “Brotherhood,” “Saria” and 
“NEFTA Football Club,” take us all 
over the world, spanning a series 
of extremely specific scenarios 
that are still perfectly capable of 
connecting with their audiences. 
“Brotherhood,” for instance, looks 
at a family broken by ISIS. An 
estranged son returns home to 
a hostile environment, finding a 
disapproving father. The film asks 
us to consider what unconditional 
love means — would you forgive 
a child for abandoning family to 
pursue a cause? The story unfolds 
over a series of tense dinners and 
fun, brotherly activities. We see 
the relief of a mother who gets 
her child back and the excitement 
that a brother has returned. 
“Brotherhood” 
examines 
this 
family’s 
complicated 
dynamic, 
ultimately leaving its audience 
aching for the fleeting nature of 
their reunion. 
“Saria,” however, looks at what 
happens when someone doesn’t 
have a family at all. Based on the 
true story of the deaths at the 
Virgen de La Asuncion orphanage, 
“Saria” 
develops 
hopeful 
characters only to rip them away 
from the audience in a fire. The 
2017 tragedy on which the film is 
based took 41 lives, all of which 
were listed in the credits following 
the film. With pointed hints at the 
timeline, “Saria” highlighted just 
how focused on America we can 
be. The fire occurred in January 
2017, a month full of women’s 
marches and turmoil in the United 
States, ultimately resulting in a 
broad, baffling ignorance of the 
tragedies these girls faced. 

Live action Oscar short 
films are perfecty nuanced

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

MADELEINE GANNON
Daily Arts Writer

KATIE BEEKMAN
Daily Arts Writer

FILM REVIEW
FILM REVIEW

KARI ANDERSON
Daily Arts Writer

EMMA CHANG
Daily Arts Writer

Each of the 2020 animated 
Oscar short films, ranked

Read more online at 

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This year’s group of Oscar-
nominated Animated Shorts are 
not lighthearted. There’s death, 
illness and abuse packed into their 
brief runtimes. Yet the ability to 
convey a moving story in a short 
amount of time is an achievement 
that should not be understated. This 
year’s shorts are beautifully and 
artistically created by hard-working 
teams from around the globe, labors 
of love that packed an emotional 
punch into short runtimes. Here are 
the Animated Shorts nominated for 
the 2020 Oscars, ranked.

5. “Kitbull” — USA, Directed 
by Rosana Sullivan
Pixar has been consistently 
creating short films since 1984, 
many of which have received 
Oscars. “Kitbull” is the third film in 
Pixar’s latest “SparkShorts” series, 
a program where they give their 
employees six months and limited 
funding to create an animated 
short. For this film, the result is a 
heartwarming tale of a scrappy 
stray kitten and a pit bull who form 
an unlikely friendship. The pitbull, 
who is abused by his owners, is 
still kind and loving. Watching 
the kitten grow to trust the dog is 
uplifting. The story is told through 
a more traditional form of hand-
drawn animation, which gives it a 
pleasing and comfortable feel.

4. “Dcera (Daughter)” — Czech 
Republic, Directed by Daria 
Kashcheeva
“Dcera,” Czech for “Daughter,” 
is emotional and visceral, telling the 
story of a daughter’s complicated 
relationship 
with 
her 
father, 
showing their estrangement before 

their eventual reconciliation. The 
stop-motion animation style is 
different and tangible, with the 
two character’s faces covered with 
streaks of black that add a sense of 
grime and imperfection. Despite 
being the longest of the nominated 
films at 15 minutes, “Dcera” is silent, 
conveying the father and daughter’s 
emotions through the movement of 
their eyes and their body language 
as they struggle to figure out who 
they are to each other.

3. “Sister (meimei)” — China/
USA, Directed by Siqi Song
“Sister” is narrated by a boy 
telling stories about his little sister 
in the 1990s — how they would fight 
over the remote or do silly things, 
like water a tooth to help it grow. 
Yet, partway through, it’s revealed 
that the sister is a figment of his 
imagination as he wonders what 
it would have been like to have a 
sister, since the one-child policy in 
China forced his mother to have 
an abortion when he was younger. 
The film’s team dedicated “Sister” 
to “the siblings we never had” from 
1980 to 2015, while the policy was in 
place. Using carefully crafted stop-
motion figures made of felt, “Sister” 
tells a story of what could have been.

2. “Hair Love” — USA, Directed 
by Matthew A. Cherry
“Hair Love” is an incredibly 
sweet story of a father-daughter 
relationship that made me tear up 
almost immediately. Zuri, a young 
African-American girl, is trying 
to style her hair by watching a 
YouTube tutorial and is failing 
impressively. When her dad walks in 
and tries to help her, he is way out of 
his comfort zone: There’s a hilarious 
sequence where her hair appears 
to take on a life of its own and the 

dad has to literally fight it. As a 
daughter of a dad who’d sometimes 
tried — and often failed — to do my 

pigtails when I was younger, it’s a 
sequence that dads and daughters 
can understand, even as the dad 
persists through his struggle and 
emerges triumphant. The short is 
the shortest of the nominees (seven 
minutes), but “Hair Love” has a 
whole lot of heart.

1. “Mémorable” — France, 
Directed by Bruno Collet
“Mémorable” 
is 
emotional 
and visually stunning, with an 
innovative 
use 
of 
animation. 
The figures are heavily textured 
and painted with thick, visible 
brushstrokes, giving it a sense 
that art has been embedded into 
the reality of this world. As Louis 
(a painter) begins to forget, his 
mental degeneration is expressed 
through the ways the animation 
changes: People appear misshapen 
and disfigured, objects appear to 
be melting around him, and soon 
he struggles to recognize his wife. 
It’s a heartbreaking depiction of 
a mind falling apart, told through 
a beautifully crafted medium as 
Louis’s artist’s brain morphs and 
shapes things into what they are not.

This year’s shorts 
are beautifully 
and artistically 
created by hard-
working teams 
from around the 
globe

From Musgraves to Shorr, an 
intro to the women of country

A lot has been written about the 
mistreatment of female artists in the 
country music industry. But for all of 
the headlines about TomatoGate, bro-
country and “rules” forbidding DJs from 
playing women back-to-back on their 
radio stations — nothing has changed. 
So, instead of rehashing the same tired 
narratives that highlight men’s power 
in the music world, I figured I would 
shed some light on the artists who, in a 
more just and equitable world, should be 
dominating modern country music right 
now.

The Essentials
It’s a shame, but even these legendary 
artists barely get any airplay.
Carrie Underwood — From the 
moment she stepped off the American 
Idol stage in 2005, Underwood has 
proven herself to be contemporary 
country music’s golden girl. She can play 
the revenge-hungry ex, all-American 
housewife and everything in-between 
with vocals that have an equally 
impressive range to match.
Miranda Lambert — The first time 
I remember seeing Lambert, she was 
setting a town on fire in her music video 
for “Kerosene.” She’s managed to keep 
up this rebellious image while tending 
to her softer side on some of her biggest 
hits like the vulnerable track “The 
House That Built Me.”
Kacey Musgraves — Even before the 
internet fell in love with Musgraves 
after her 2019 Album of the Year win at 
the Grammys, Kacey was doing country 
music 
her 
way. 
Always 
lyrically-
clever, instrumentally wholesome and 
thematically outspoken, Kacey’s no 
stranger to going up against the powers 
that be. Her LGBTQ+ affirming anthem 
“Follow Your Arrow ‘’ was banned from 
country radio in 2013.

Mostly Radio-friendly
It isn’t shocking to hear these women 
on country radio, but it’s not quite 
normal either.
Maren Morris — Between her monster 
pop hit “The Middle” with Zedd and 
her membership in The Highwomen 
— you’ve definitely heard Maren’s 
powerhouse vocals before. Sonically, 
her solo work lives at the center of those 
sounds. She’s bubbly in love on her latest 
GIRL: A glossy but forceful display of 

pop country. 
Kelsea Ballerini — I discovered Kelsea 
when Taylor Swift tweeted her approval 
of her first single “Love Me Like You 
Mean It” in 2015. Taking it as a sign 
that the next princess in Taylor’s line of 
pop country royalty had been crowned 
— I dove right in, and I’m glad I did. 
Ballerini’s music is fun, glittery and, as 
a student of Swift, very catchy. 
Carly Pearce — Pearce’s music is 
addictive. Her first album Every Little 
Thing came out in 2017 and I’ve returned 
to it at least a couple times a month ever 
since. Her songs sound like Southern 
hospitality and her voice is like honey.

Fresh Pop Country
A breath of fresh air in a snap-track, 
boom-clap world. 
Kelleigh Bannen — Sometimes a song 
will stop you in its tracks and that’s what 
Bannen’s “Damn I Still Love You” did to 
me. She has a talent for simultaneously 
sounding playful and soulful, masking 
her heartbreak with word play.
Jillian Jacqueline — Like so many of 
these women, Jacqueline is a storyteller 
— the difference is that she has a way 
of sounding like your best friend while 
doing it. Whether she’s poking fun at 
her own drama on “Tragic” or narrating 
the crumbling of a relationship on 
“Sad Girls,” she gets what you’re going 
through.

Country that Rocks
These women are badasses. That’s all.
Ashley McBryde —The songs released 
thus far from her upcoming album 
Never Will include a murderous, rocking 
warning to her Dad’s mistress “Martha 

Divine” and a catchy “it is what it is” 
admission of her “One Night Standards.” 
What’s more intriguing (or country) 
than that?
Kalie Shorr — Shorr is true to the 
title of her album Open Book. Addiction, 
depression, her sister’s death and her 
own eating disorder — it gets messy, but 
that also means it gets real. 

Singer-Songwriters
Maybe they aren’t officially “country,” 
but they’re so good I’m claiming them 
anyway.
Caitlyn Smith — Smith has presence. 
Her voice is like liquid gold and with 
top-notch songwriting, the stories she 
tells are worth every penny. I still can’t 
get enough of her debut album Starfire.
Emily Scott Robinson — Listening to 
Robinson is like walking alongside a 
babbling brook. Her voice immediately 
grounds you in the present, but her 
storytelling takes your mind elsewhere. 
She’s a wanderer and her clear, rootsy 
voice invites you with her.

The Almost Break-Throughs
If they were men, things would be 
different.
Cam — Her song “Burning House” 
was a Grammy nominated hit in 2015 
and her album Untamed is just that: 
Bursting with energy and unafraid to 
break boundaries into pop and folk. 
Somehow Cam can do everything at 
once and still make it sound organic.

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ALBUM REVIEW

Williams’ punch is 
as sobering as it is 
satisfying

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

