STRAND Showcase Spotlight: In Another Conversation With Bridget.
Photo, and all others in this article, by Maggie Zhu (Instagram: @heyxmaggie)
“I’m literally in my pyjamas”, Bridget laughs as we begin our Zoom call. Having just gotten home from work, she seems by all accounts a normal girl from Essex - but Bridget’s eponymous alter-ego takes the form of a time-travelling, eyeliner-wearing, grunge girl visiting 2024 from the 1990s.
From releasing her new EP entitled Damage Reversal to performing at Glastonbury, Bridget’s sound is infused with power, rage, and energy, enough to satiate anyone seeking relief from 21st-century ennui. Last Friday, Bridget performed for the second time at one of FEMMESTIVAL's showcases at Two Palms in Hackney, supported once again by the STRAND. In anticipation of this event, I spoke to Bridget about her recent achievements, her musical identity and how she deals with the industry’s obstacles as a female musician.
I was first curious to know about her EP, Damage Reversal, released in February following her first interview with the STRAND back in January. A fierce amalgamation of grunge, 2000s pop-punk and riot grrrl, Bridget tells me “I didn’t sit down and go ‘right, I’m going to do an EP’. I had the songs for quite a while, left over [from previous projects].” The title, Damage Reversal, comes from Bridget’s marking of the “end of an era”.
“All five songs are about learning to reverse the damage that life throws at you. Whether it's getting over a shitty partner, finding confidence in yourself, or recovering from a messy night out."
Music indeed has cathartic powers - and I'm especially interested to know whether it's the main medium Bridget uses to help her reverse damage in her own life. Laughing, she tells me that she doesn't approach writing music in a stereotypically therapeutic way. She doesn’t think “oh, I’m sad, I’ll write about it” - yet when she listens back to it, she realises “that explains how I was feeling, though I didn’t realise it at the time”. She goes on to say, however, “for me, performing [songs] live, that’s my everything. That’s what I love. That’s the most honest and true representation of how my songs are supposed to be”.
Bridget’s love for performing is evident, as is the impact of her music on the audiences that watch her. We talk about her recent performance at Glastonbury Festival, and she comments on the surreal feeling it evoked when it finished: “after it all settled in, I was like, ‘what the hell just happened?’”. She remarks that there were some funny moments and she had “such a laugh doing it”, but these were balanced by the beautiful moments that came with connecting with her audience. Part of the magic of Bridget’s music is that it is something new for young people, and something nostalgic for older people.
Interestingly, she describes her crowd at Glastonbury as "a majority older". “I find that quite a lot, and I think it’s because it resonates with them because they were there in the 90s and they miss it. I think it makes them feel younger and free”. Yet, there was also a younger crowd, who were “overhearing it, coming closer, and thinking, ‘this gives me the opportunity to jump about’. A lot of people were telling me afterwards that they’d never done that before at a show – or that they’d never even been to a rock show before.”
Photo of Bridget. performing at the last FEMMESTIVAL X STRAND Showcase in January 2024 - by Maggie Zhu
Bridget is one of the artists, that like Nirvana, Fugazi or Sonic Youth, transform venue grounds into trampolines: people cannot help but jump at the sound of their music. More recently, Bridget’s contemporaries such as Amy Taylor from Amyl and the Sniffers can be seen doing the same. Citing Taylor herself as one of her influences, she tells me she admires performances where musicians have “nothing else to give”.
This admirable rawness and expression was also at the core of the grunge movement; a genre that musicians like Bridget are reviving. Many claim grunge died when so many of the movement's pioneers died, yet Bridget is someone that is carrying on the legacy of our grunge predecessors through music enriched with the same sludge, heaviness and dissatisfaction we can see in the likes of Hole or Soundgarden. Mourning these musicians together, I was curious to know which musician, dead or alive, she would want to get advice from about the music industry.
“Oh, God”, she says first. “Well, I would like to speak to Kurt Cobain. I mean… He is the grunge God. I don’t know if I’d really ask him advice though, because I reckon he was pretty pessimistic about the whole thing. I’d just like to chat with him really!”
“I’d also love to talk to Kim Gordon”, she adds, and is embarrassed to share that she can be seen dancing in a video of one of Gordon’s Glastonbury performances, the same day she performed her own set. “I hope I’m like that when I’m her age!" she tells me.
Photos by Maggie Zhu
The fuzz, sludge and noise of Bridget’s musical influences are not necessarily how she intends to sound forever, however.
“I have to be honest: I don’t think I’ve discovered my sound yet. I’ve always known what I want the mood to be when I’m playing – I want it to be heavier, punkier and grungier. But it’s still so early on [for Bridget's career]. I definitely just want my shows and my music to make you want to rock out, but the exact sound of it is still taking shape. So I’m excited to see where it goes”.
Bridget certainly has immense potential. With funding, she says she would hope to be able to experiment with her sound more, and like Alice in Chains did in 1994 with their EP Jar of Flies. The funding allowed them to do something unexpected with their sound, producing an album full of country, folk and ballads – a stark difference from the metal they were known for. There is clearly something further waiting to be unleashed from Bridget’s music, which comes through even in her approach to music videos: as she tells me, “I like to throw something in there that you might not expect to see to that song – I like that juxtaposition”.
Bridget seems to always have her sights admirably set on defying expectations. There is always a role female musicians are expected to fulfil, and emotions they are expected to suppress, but like the riot grrrls, Bridget intends to do things in her own terms. She expresses that though things haven’t been “particularly tough” for her, it is still frustrating to regularly be undermined as a female musician.
“Before I perform at a show I definitely get overlooked, or underrated, and people expect you to just get up on stage and play a nice little song, and look all pretty, and not really know much and not really understand music. Like you’re just a woman, a nice, little, small girl… but then you can just blow ‘em to pieces with your sound, which is always fun!”.
“I feel really positive about the future, especially when it comes to events like this”, she says of FEMMESTIVAL. As for Bridget’s own future, we can expect to see some potential collaborations with other artists in the pipeline, alongside more music and more gigs. “And a lip kit”, she adds.
If you had the fortune of seeing the incredible line-up at FEMMESTIVAL's July showcase, including Bridget, Tally Spear and TASH, I'm sure you left feeling empowered. As Bridget said, and as we here at the STRAND will always support: “Girls to the front!”
Edited by Talia Andrea, Editor in Chief
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