Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party proves Hayley Williams is fearless and unstoppable

At first, the songs were only accessible to those who had purchased a product from her hair dye company, Good Dye Young; they were uploaded to streaming services a few days later. With no track listing or even a name given to the project, fans were left to create their own playlists. More significant still, this marked the Paramore singer’s first solo release as an independent artist following her exit from Atlantic Records – a decision that speaks volumes about her confidence in the material. Now, the collection has been officially released as Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party.

The music itself is stellar – mature songwriting of crystalline brilliance and fearless craft, with Williams operating at the peak of her powers. Across its sprawling 59 minutes, the record showcases a remarkable variety of genres and intimate textures, adorned with her most thoughtful, incisive, and personal lyrics to date.

I doubt many would have chosen the spiky “Ice In My OJ” as the opener, yet there’s a fiendishness in its placement. The track cleverly interpolates the melody from “Jumping Inside”, a song by the Christian music group Mammoth City Messengers that Williams provided vocals for over 20 years ago – one of her earliest known recordings. This, combined with its caustic lyricism (“A lot of dumb motherfuckers that I made rich”) makes for a daring first gambit after becoming independent. It also offers a compact distillation of her most dynamic vocal eccentricities: one moment it’s smooth, placid tones, the next her voice collapses into droll, eye-rolling nonchalance, and by the time the hulking chorus hits, she’s literally screaming, “I’M IN A BAND, I’M IN A BAND!”

Williams casts a more critical eye over her Southern roots on the nightmarish-sounding "True Believer". It addresses gentrification in Nashville (“All our best memories / Were bought and then turned into apartments”), references an infamously haunting viral photo (“They pose in Christmas cards with guns as big as all their children”), and delivers a scathing denunciation of Christian conservatism: “They say that Jesus is the way but then they gave him a white face / So they don't have to pray to someone they deem lesser than them.” Meanwhile, on the title track, she sings of being the “biggest star in this racist country singer's bar.” Precisely who she’s referring to is open to interpretation, but it’s all damning, audacious writing.

There are 18 tracks here – “Parachute” is a new addition – and miraculously, each one justifies its inclusion. “Kill Me” and “Mirtazapine” both pull thrillingly from ‘80s alternative rock and grunge; “Dream Girl In Shibuya” and “Blood Bros” are gorgeous, delicately constructed mini-masterpieces; “Disappearing Man” and “Zissou” straddle forward-thinking, progressive pop. Elsewhere, “Brotherly Hate” veers between quirky playfulness and snarling antagonism, while “Whim” is the heartbreaking sound of someone attempting to navigate a relationship, still haunted by old defence mechanisms (“Searching for a bloodstain, bandages are clean”). Williams even flips one of the crassest choruses from the ‘90s into something strangely insular and affecting on “Discovery Channel”.

It’s perhaps fitting that “Parachute” closes proceedings, as there might not be a better example of the record’s rich soundscapes and fluid instrumentation. The track opens with exquisite, fractured piano chords before switching to thumping synth bass in the second verse and still finds time to flirt momentarily with the industrial heft of Nine Inch Nails during its epic middle eight. This is elevated even further by Daniel James’ tremendous production – he also co-wrote the record with Williams. It’s astoundingly lean, opting for a gentle sheen rather than needlessly drifting into lo-fi territory.

Interestingly, everything still feels distinctly separate from her career with Paramore – there are only faint traces of the new wave and taut post-punk sounds explored on After Laughter and This Is Why. Instead, Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party is a myriad of things all at once: heartfelt but haunting, minimal yet intricate, familiar yet singular, uncompromising and undeniably powerful. Solo albums often risk feeling like detours or side-chapters, unnecessary and inessential. No longer tethered to past expectations, Williams has created something that exceeds even her finest, most vital work. In short: a masterpiece, then.