Catch Bully with Kid Wave at the scholar Bar at the Leicester 02 Academy,
Having interned at Steve Albini’s studio, Bully frontwoman Alicia Bognanno is a musical force to be reckoned with – writing, singing, playing and recording all of Bully’s material. And yes, Albini is a fan of the Nashville-based band too. He told us he’s “rooting” for them in 2015. We can’t argue with that.
Nashville rockers Bully, who were in Austin for SXSW, are currently on a tour with JEFF the Brotherhood which wraps up mid-April. , but Bully are set to tour the UK stopping here next month for their first UK tour, playing
After their UK tour, Bully will be back in NYC for the Northside Festival, playing the big 50 Kent show on June 13 with Best Coast, Built to Spill and Alvvays.
with two bands named Daddy Issues its not easy to seperate the two this one includes two Jennas and Emily from Nashville. They dig into grungy, garage pop on “Ugly When I Cry,” one of only two released singles. Droning guitar and bass swarm distorted angsty vocals for an undeniable 90’s sound with grit and heart. Sad girls rejoice. The newest single from Daddy Issues, everyone’s favorite sad girl witch rock band.
I’ve been a bit infatuated with this Nashville songwriter since I first heard him last year, and the debut full-length that he just recorded is phenomenal. It’s one of those 10-song records that’s damned near perfect, traveling through the old, smoky bars of older days and down the twisted back roads of love. These are Sam Cooke-caliber love songs, if they had more of a honky-tonk bent and were fueled by repetitive nights of hard whiskeying. The way that Anderson East has of conveying that deep-gutted hurt that can only come after an exhausting want or attraction is next level expertise. He is a spectacular talent, and releases like this one are as thrilling as they come.
Bully does get along well with others, despite the band’s name. They’ve garnered a wave of new fans after their first solid year and a half of performing as a four-piece, particularly around their home scene, Nashville, which can be a tough place to stand out. Their five-song debut EP was released by StarTime International, with a video for the single “Brainfreeze” premiering last month.
Singer/songwriter/guitarist Alicia Bognanno has found that the best way to break out seems to be doing it all yourself (or, at least, doing as much as possible—yourself).“I thought that if I could technically do everything myself,” said Bognanno, “then I wouldn’t really have any excuse not to and not have to depend on everyone else to make it happen for me.”
That notion was the driving factor for Alicia Bognanno to study audio engineering (eventually interning at several studios, including Electrical Audio with the renowned Steve Albini and, later, running sound for the Nashville venue The Stone Fox).
“I could be a Milkman / or I could get up and be what I want to be…” (There’s a telling lyric from the A side to the band’s 7” single released in mid 2014, demonstration Bognanno’s determination).
Though she was raised in Minnesota, she wound up in Nashville because her schooling, (in Murfreesboro, TN) was just a stones-throw away from that unbelievably verdant scene. It was in Nashville that she met musician Stewart Copeland, who was drumming in Pujol at the time.
“I was slowly becoming more confident in bringing up my own songs to other people,” Bognanno said of that time, just as she was finishing college and internships. She’d been in bands prior to Bully, but nothing serious. She was always writing her own stuff, however, and that’s the stuff that Copeland heard, his enthusiastic encouragements (as well as offering to provide the rhythms for her as a fledgling two-piece) leading to what we now know as Bully.
“When we first started playing I was a nervous wreck,” Bognanno recalls, chuckling at herself. “Well, not a nervous wreck, buuut… I mean, living in Nashville, everyone has been playing out here since they were 12. But, for me, I was nervous. Our fourth show was opening for Best Coast and I think my hands were shaking while I was playing. Yeah.”
Bognanno says that Nashville is an ideal place to be if you want to be in a touring band, like a launchpad filled with resources and similarly-minded music-types (in varying fields) with scads of experience. “And certain jobs are cooler about hiring musicians and are okay about them leaving frequently. I mean, it’s kinda unheard of for a job to be that cool, but, those jobs are here and you can find work doing freelance engineering. More opportunities than most cities, definitely.”
Bognanno is joined by Copeland on drums, Clayton Parker on guitar and Reece Lazarus on bass. In May, they’ll head to England for The Great Escape festival. When Bognanno shouts that she’s “excited,” it’s pronounced in all caps, assuredly. “It’s cool to get over there, but we’re all just really good friends at this point, too. To be in an amazing place with my best friends, that’s the fun part.”
Bully takes the glistening grooves of early new wave and late 70’s pop/rock and grimes them up with the distortion of an indie-punk aesthetic, pretty melodies hazily howled through her higher register, weaving their way like a sun-stung fiberglass surfboard over the vigorous rhythms and cresting guitars.
Theirs is a blend of a springier pop from an ever more confidently-voiced singer/songwriter, layered with sparks of feedback-frayed punk. It’s telling that Bognanno says she’s been listening to a lot of Paul Westerberg and The Silkworms—masters of balancing detached-yet-taut pop songs with a perfect amount of gnarlinesss.
Her biggest takeaway from Electrical Audio: the beauties and benefits of analog recording. “To watch bands come in and out in five days and just have a record done and mixed and ready to be mastered.”
Like licking a battery, Bully‘s“I Remember” feels good even as it hurts. The song from the Nashville four-piece recorded in Steve Albini’s studio but produced and mixed by singer Alicia Bognanno is the first taste from their new album and it’s fast and nasty-sounding, with a punkish edge that tastes a little sweet even as its serrated edges scar your skin. In short, I fucking love it. “I wanted ‘I Remember’ to be personal, intense and raw, It’s mixed slightly blown out with a heavy use of ambient mics in hopes that the listener will feel the same energy I had while singing it.” We feel it!
Bully does get along well with others, despite the band’s name. They’ve garnered a wave of new fans after their first solid year & a half of performing as a four-piece, particularly around their home scene, Nashville, which can be a tough place to stand out. Their five-song debut EP was released by StarTime International, with a video for the single “Brainfreeze” premiering last month. Bully is Bognanno’s baby, but the Nashville four-piece are all old friends: she and drummer boyfriend Stewart Copeland were in a college band called King Arthur, which they quit when Bognanno started writing her own material. Copeland was also in Saddle Creek garage rockers Pujol, as was guitarist Clayton Parker. Bassist Reece Lazarus works with Bognanno at cult Nashville bar The Stone Fox. On the road they play Settlers Of Catan and plan routes around independent comic book stores. “I don’t really go out much,” says Bognanno, who seems like an unwaveringly practical person.
When you go to a live show by Nashville bandBully, here’s what you’re going to see: An awesome chick dressed in jeans and a T-shirt who is mad at a guy who has wronged her. She’s giving both him and his bad excuses the middle finger through loud drums, punk-influenced rock’n’roll guitar riffs, and bittersweet indie pop vocals (that definitely sound a bit Stefani-esque). This girl has her best dudes (who also happen to be her band) behind her (literally)…and that girl is Alicia Bognanno. Nashville’sBullyare self-releasing a self-titled EP , and ahead of that they’ve put out its lead track, “Milkman.” Considering their hometown of Nashville and their love of distorted guitars, there’s a little garage rock in there, but “Milkman” has big pop hooks that wouldn’t have been out of place on ’90s rock radio.
It makes sense to me then, that the Bognanno-fronted Bully be named what they are.
Bully is not the fist-thrower who picks a fight for no reason. Bully is a girl who believes in people standing up for themselves, whether it be in the way you dress, voting to protect women’s rights, or by yelling at some jerk from an indie venue stage somewhere in the USA.
When interviewing the badass Bognanno, I feel like she doesn’t even realize how badass she actually is, how much she can be a role model for young women in the music industry, and, really for anyone who just wants to be themselves—wearing denim and old tees, because, well, they’re just fucking comfortable.
Nashville-based ALL THEM WITCHES impress in both their cohesive sound and their obvious drive toward an individual approach. Their blend of blues rocking grooves and heavy psych-derived jamming comes through clearly, and has wasted no time in getting to the public’s ears thanks to date their two stunning albums.
Their debut LP, “Our Mother Electricity” was released in early 2012, making them the first American band to release an album through Germany’s Elektrohasch, heavy psyche innovator Stefan Koglek’s personal imprint. They soon became known for their engaging live shows. They quickly followed this up in July of 2013 with the “Extra Pleasant” EP, recorded direct to a four-track cassette tape with two microphones with their DIY aesthetic firmly established.
When their sophomore effort, Lightning At The Door, was informally released as a surprise to hungry fans in November of 2013, they quickly sold through their physical stock of discs, receiving more praise for their ability to balance dense, chugging tracks like “Swallowed by the Sea” with soulful, bluesy ones like “The Marriage of Coyote Woman.”
What I appreciate about Steve Earle is that he writes about a side of humanity that I don’t live. He writes about irresponsibility, about separation by choice, about the rambles of a man who searches but never seems to find. Steve Earle’s tribulations are well known and rather unimportant to mention . With his many great albums behind him, it is important to remember Guitar Town, a terrific piece filled with a variety of styles and the kernal of all the things Earle still seems to represent.
Steve Earle seems to be always questioning why. and with Guitar Town, the questioning has never been more succinctly stated or as catchily written. Inspired by Earle’s attendence at a Bruce Springsteen concert, this singer/songwriter masterpiece lovingly exploits the conflict between the hero’s desire to stay in a small town and the need to leave. Set in 1980’s Reagan-era America and featuring Duane Eddy-style reverberated guitar lines blazing through dangerously infectious melodies, Guitar Town’s dusty, blue-collar vignettes relentlessly engage and tug at the heart strings, and Earle’s stark character development revives desperate (“Someday”) and exhuberantly hopeful (“Guitar Town”) emotions from the listener’s childhood. This ‘Dylanesque-country’ sound inadvertantly awakened a young, rock-loving, college-educated country audience yearning for the disappearing rock sounds of John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen. Earle set the mark on the top rung for this type of new country, and with the public expecting only the best, Nashville delivered its finest and most daring projects of the post-Hank Williams era. Easily the most groundbreaking Nashville recording since Waylon Jennings’ “Honky Tonk Heroes” sessions, Guitar Town was named one of Rolling Stone’s Top 100 Recordings of the 80’s and was praised in the rock press (Robert Cristgau’s “The Village Voice” and Dave Marsh’s “Rock and Roll Confidential”) long before receiving favorable country reviews. Guitar Town continues to exert a massive influence on songwriters 16 years after its release and is widely regarded as a cornerstone of the 1980’s “New Traditionalist” movement in Nashville. Steve Earle may never understand the full impact this recording will continue to have on future generations of songwriters. As his music continues to move towards exclusively political themes, it becomes clear he will not visit Americana territory again, but since he virtually defined the genre with this monolithic MCA debut, he can leave well enough (or, in this case, near perfect) alone.
Southern roots rocker Steve Earle debuted a brand-new song from his forthcoming album, take a listen to the bluesy ‘You’re the Best Lover That I Ever Had’ .Steve Earle has been recording his upcoming album, ‘Terraplane’ — which was released February 17th supported by his backing band, the Dukes, at the House of Blues in Nashville.
“Most of this was written on the road,” Earle said . “I went through a divorce and I needed the money, so I’ve been touring a lot, just working constantly and writing whenever I can.”
“Everything that happens to me will find its way into my lyrics, which can be an advantage as a writer and a disadvantage as a person,” he said of his songwriting process. “I don’t wanna hurt anybody’s feelings. I’m not trying to be mean. But I’m not gonna not write about what’s happening, so there’s a lot of sad stuff here. It was a good time to make a blues record.”
Earle and the Dukes have taken to recording the songs live after an hour or two of practicing, giving Earle a kind of laissez-faire attitude toward recording.
“Let’s just find a performance where all the weird s–t happens at the right place, and that’s our take,” he said.
Steve Earle and company seem to effortlessly find that sweet spot, which can be heard on the new track
Seryn are an ambitious six-piece located in Nashville, TN (via Denton, TX) are readying their second album, “Shadow Songs” — a collection of delightful, and soothing modern folk tunes.
Their latest single, “The Fire,” is no exception to Seryn’s rule of sweet and melodic folk-pop. It’s catchy and unassuming, clear and polished. ’The Fire’ is about those flash moments in life when something that has been dormant finally comes to life. There is a lot of push and pull in the song both lyrically and musically,” “The rushing rhythms represent the momentum that is carrying us onward, while the sweeping strings and odd-metered chorus lend themselves to the uncertainty we feel in those moments.” One thinks of tides coming in and out, long days spent seaside. Seryn’s ear is tuned to the first of things, that is, nature.
The Fat Angel Sings 