Photo: Jenn Raymo
By Jenn Raymo
With a blend of pop hooks and lo-fi crunch, audio engineer Alicia Bognanno’s solo project has evolved into a rock band called Bully. As the guitarist and singer, Bognanno has some experience in Music City bars with college bands behind her. Bully, which also includes her boyfriend and drummer Stewart, lead guitarist Clayton, and bassist Reese, writes music that sounds as if it’s inspired by early alt-rock—the Breeders, Veruca Salt and a little bit of Nirvana’s famous Rat distortion pedal sound.
Bognanno studied audio engineering in Tennessee as an undergrad and interned with Chicago recording engineer Steve Albini (Pixies, Nirvana). During time spent in college bands, she found her three bandmates, who would help bring her audio recordings to live stage. Bognanno recorded the “Bully EP” in 2013, but the band didn’t begin to generate a buzz until late 2014 when Brooklyn Vegan and NME listed it as an “up-and-coming artist.” The band later released a single, “Milkman,” and several months later, an EP. With the recent surge of indie bands such as Speedy Ortiz and Cherry Glazerr getting more widespread attention, Bully has been gaining fans quickly and with every show it plays.
The record sounds like the band does onstage: The crunchy bass provides a steady beat, the lead guitar adds a feedback-saturated, shoegaze element to Bognanno’s rhythms, and her guitar is the rhythmic hook of the songs. Her vocal is sweet and lilting with moments of grit and lends itself to the upbeat tone of the songs, but the lyrics address aspects of Bognanno’s life that would attempt to drag her down. In “Poetic Trash” Bognanno sings, “Picking up your poetic trash/I won’t buy in/I’m not your prisoner.” She sounds as if she’s had enough of some narrow-minded ideal in her life, adding, “You’re undercover/Way too soft to show your skin/Playing pretty/Trying to get a reaction.” The music is the medium through which Bognanno calls bullshit as a girl in a male-dominated world.
Many of the songs are short, two-minute, punk-rock pieces without the leather and snarls, but Bully’s self-titled EP is still great for long road trips, because each time you play it, new, technical pieces of its production pop out of the speakers. Bognanno stole a page from Albini’s book with a lo-fi recording that seems deceptively simple at first but on later spins reveals secrets embedded in the record’s layers. Bognanno’s at-times raspy voice requires several listens to pick out the lyrics, the bass lines, the melodies from the lead guitar, and the attention-grabbing pop hooks. We can relate to Bognanno’s sense of being an outsider when she writes in the opening track “Brainfreeze,” “’C uz I can’t sleep/And could never get a ride home/So I end up on the front porch.” But we also hear her willingness to stand up for herself in the song “Bully”: “I’m not your water boy/I don’t wanna be on your team/That’s exactly what my bully said/When he’s standing face-to-face with me.”
Bognanno isn’t shy about asserting her place on her record. She’s got a presence that is subtle but unmistakably strong. She’ll hold people accountable for whatever delusions about a girl in a band they might harbor. “It’s time to stop pointing fingers/It’s time to buck up and be a man,” she sings in “Sharktooth.” The band already has recorded its first full-length and is currently in the process of mastering the record, due out this spring. Pitchfork just announced that Bully is on the roster for its summer festival in July, and the band is playing another festival in the United Kingdom in May. Those “up-and-coming” predictions may prove correct.
Bandcamp link: http://bullythemusic.bandcamp.com/album/bully-ep