EP Review - Bridges - Life of the Party
Review By: Faith Hamblyn
Artist Name: Bridges
Album Name: Life of the Party
Label: Bridges
Release Date: 20th March 2026
Bridges - Life of the Party EP
Bridges’ new five-track EP, Life Of The Party, opens with Drive, a clarion call to anyone that has ever been young and too jagged or too sensitive to fit in. The guitar and rhythm section sound like steady rolling car wheels on rained-on tarmac, with the echo of passing dark towns as you drive through them. There’s a catch in Rachel Hamilton’s voice that evokes the quiet desperation of longing to just go, now, anywhere — anywhere; somewhere where they’re like us. As long as they’re with you, driving or driven, of course — on the run to what the night holds in store, which just has to be better than what’s in store at time of writing the song. The backing vocals chant like the drone of tyres, with the lead vocal like the resigned, already half-dashed hope of a hitchhiker; guitar and BVs closing out the song like the chug of a train headed away, fading like abandoned drama into the growing distance.
Title track Life Of The Party starts with Bridges donning Docs and a dress — preach, sister — and progresses into socialising with anxiety and the interior monologue of how you’re doing. It’s less sure-sounding than Lorde’s self-doubt anthems, but it echoes her introverted beginnings — the fear and joy of missing out, the delicate balance of social anxiety, building into a celebratory dance anthem. Bridges captures the contradictory drive to sparkle and charm while being stuck in your own head. In the midst of a party, we can still be all alone.
Close To You is high and breathy, pulsing like an unanswered ringing telephone tone. She sings, ‘It’s not cinematic; it’s true,’ but it does sound like the suspense of having love in sight but being surrounded by the unknown. The desire is written in the lower-range confessions of the verses. It feels like a heartbeat, with fluttering gasping thoughts beating over the top.
Penultimate track Lifeline will damn near break your heart. Like the slow, sobbing resolution of a crying jag, it’s a poignant plea to just be there, even though they’ve already long gone. It’s high drama tempered by world weariness — we’ve been here before, and it’s the end of the world, but there’s a slow, steady inevitability to pain continuing, even though all you want is for everything to go back to the way it once was - like that could ever be true. But you can never go home again, and hope is just an ember. There’s no way you’d not go to her aid.
Lungs is an anthem for the tired and wired — manic, pulled into circles by self-doubt. Do you call it, face into the darkness and head home, or just let go? She’s jaded and has nothing left to lose, which is where freedom has got to lie. It’s the end of the night, and nothing is certain, but there’s something cathartic in seeing how it’s been up till now and how it can be, at any passing moment. Sometimes you just have to breathe, try to just breathe; dance for a while.
Melancholy, outsiderdom and confusion are a rich, relatable, timeless vein to mine, and Bridges’ voice has range, depth, and, appealingly, a hitch that lends it humanity alongside her often synthesised drumbeats and amplified guitar. Life Of The Party, the EP, has lush lyrics and photography on glossy paper in the jewel-case CD, and it sounds so nice if you can get your hands on one. The only thing lacking is Bridges’ pop-punk edge, as heard on 2024’s Misfits. But hopefully that will be present on a full-length Bridges album.
RATING: 4 Stars
