More than a decade into her career, Willow still treats genre as something to be bent rather than obeyed. From the shadowy jazz inflections of The 1st to the pared back R&B of Willow, through the pop punk detour of lately i feel EVERYTHING and the gauzy textures of 2024’s empathogen, she has made reinvention a reflex. On her self produced seventh album, petal rock black, that instinct hardens into something more obsessive.
Recorded over the course of a year in near isolation, the album features an impressive cast of collaborators including George Clinton, Kamasi Washington, Jon Batiste and Tune-Yards. On paper, it reads like a summit of restless virtuosos. In practice, the record often feels like a private experiment that has not quite decided what it wants to say.
Willow plays much of it herself, hopping between guitar, piano and drums, favouring odd time signatures and deliberately knotted arrangements. There is real skill here. The musicianship is feverish, almost confrontational in its complexity. Yet that determination to prove range and seriousness can weigh the songs down. Several tracks introduce striking ideas only to abandon them within minutes, as if momentum is less important than the act of disruption itself.
Numbers such as “vegetation” and “nothing and everything” shimmer with atmosphere but struggle to build emotional stakes. Similar drum patterns recur, hi hats ticking with polite restraint, which blunts the individuality of the tracks. Even a distorted, digitised reworking of Prince’s “I Would Die 4 U” feels absorbed into the same grey wash of texture.
The album steadies when Willow turns inward. On “omnipotent” and “holy mystery” she explores sexuality and spirituality with a directness that cuts through the abstraction. Her harmonies stack in patient layers, and she uses her voice less as a showcase and more as a conduit. In these moments, she recalls the textural sensitivity of Solange, understanding how a murmured refrain or wordless run can carry as much weight as a dense lyric sheet.
The second half of “ear to the cocoon” hints at the album that might have been. The arrangement gathers force rather than fragmenting. Percussion grows more insistent, vocal lines interlock with purpose, and the chaos begins to feel earned. For a few minutes, the experimentation has direction. Willow stops sounding like an artist trying to outrun expectation and instead like one following a genuine thread of curiosity.
petal rock black is not short of ambition. It is full of ideas, textures and technical flourishes. What it lacks, too often, is restraint. When Willow allows feeling rather than complexity to lead, she is magnetic. When she becomes preoccupied with demonstrating how far she can stretch a sound, the songs drift.
There is a compelling artist at the centre of this record, still pushing, still searching. The challenge now is not whether she can do more, but whether she can do less and trust that it will be enough.
