Nashville grunge-rockers Bully first appeared in October of 2013 with Milkman, a six-song EP boasting thrashy tunes with names like “Poetic Trash” and “Faceblind”. The band, made up of Alicia Bognanno, Stewart Copeland (not to be mistaken with THAT Stewart Copeland of The Police), Clayton Parker, and Reese Lazarus, quickly grabbed our attention with their raw, chainsaw-attack performance and lead vocalist Bognanno’s steadfast, honest lyrics. Her gruff-yet-saccharine timbre sounds like Tegan and Sara screaming over a jet engine in a sand storm, and I mean that in the very best way. The band have been on tour consistently since Milkman’s release, gaining comparisons to Vancouver’s own Japandroids or Bleached-era Nirvana.
What made them even more intriguing was that Bognanno not only knew how to write a song, but also record, produce and engineer one, too. She spent most of 2011 interning at Electrical Audio in Chicago, under the wing of Steve Albini, arguably one of the most influential recording engineers of recent history.
“It was a fantastic learning experience,” she says from a mystery stop on tour. “I am very thankful I got the opportunity to intern at such a great studio.”
Bognanno put these newly honed skills to use when she recorded and produced Milkman, and then once again for Feels Like, their debut LP. If she could thank Albini for just one thing, it’s her drive.
“What I really admire about him is his work ethic,” she said in an interview with Gigwise. “He cares so much about that studio. He’s working because he loves it.”
Feel Like’s official release date of June 23 was announced shortly after a triumphant run at SXSW, Austin’s international music festival. If you are not familiar with SXSW, getting buzz down there is a band’s equivalent of winning the media lottery: you are guaranteed a plethora of relevancy for at least the remainder of the year. Bully played several sold-out showcases to a full array of tastemakers and bloggers, including NPR, Stereogum and NME. The highly influential blog Pitchfork filmed their entire performance at The House of Vans and distributed it online. Spin magazine even compared Bognanno’s screech to Renee Zellweger’s character Gina in Empire Records singing “Sugar High” from the rooftop.
If that isn’t enough praise, Ryan Adams recently tweeted that Bully are “the best band in the world at this very moment.”
Feels Like promises to solidify their presence amongst the ‘90s-nostalgia crowd, but also offering something a little new. After all, Bognanno was born in the ‘90s, and Bully can hardly be categorized as a throwback band.
Most music journalists enjoy the description “brutally honest” in reference to her lyrics. She touches on topics both intimate and taboo, like dirty bed sheets, body issues and all sorts of internalized thoughts that are simultaneously released the moment her lips hit the microphone.
“Sometimes finding the right words can be difficult, but singing it isn’t,” she admits. “Usually it feels pretty good to sing whatever I write or I probably wouldn’t write it.”
To call her music cathartic is an understatement. Yet Bognanno comes across as polite, shy and reserved – far from the soul-bearing siren we hear with Bully. Maybe that’s part of the intrigue. One can’t be volcanic all of the time, or there’d be nothing left to give.
“I wrote the more honest stuff because it’s some sort of weird therapy for me,” she recently told Interview Magazine. “I wouldn’t put stuff out there that I didn’t want out there just because I thought it made a good song. I feel like I’m in control of it all.”
Bully will continue their relentless tour schedule well into the year, leaving little or no time for Bognanno to do anything but play music in a band, “something I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember.”
Engineering and producing will have to wait. But to be in a position such as hers is downright unique. There is no plan A, nor plan B. They blend into each other, allowing little room for crippling self-doubt. It feels like Bully’s story is just beginning.
• Bully opens for Best Coast, Wednesday, June 3, at The Imperial. Tickets are $20, and available online at Ticketweb.ca
