Alicia Bognanno is ready to kick some ass.
On her third Bully album, the Nashville singer-guitarist and producer lives up to her adopted handle — she comes out swinging, pulls no punches and leaves plenty of blood on the tracks. Recorded in the same studio where Nirvana cut In Utero, and helmed by Bognanno’s first outside producer (the esteemed John Cogleton, whose resume includes St. Vincent and Sleater-Kinney), Sugaregg — no, I don’t know what it means either — delivers a mighty wallop of classic grunge straight from the ’90s. Fuelled by Bognanno’s rugged riffs and topped with her ragged wail, these tightly wound, hard little nuggets smack you right between the eyes and don’t let up until she’s damn good and ready. Duck and cover.
THE PRESS RELEASE: “A very old saying goes that no one saves us but ourselves. Recognizing and breaking free from the patterns impeding our forward progress can be transformative — just ask Bully’s Alicia Bognanno. Indeed, the third Bully album, Sugaregg, may not ever have come to fruition had Bognanno not navigated every kind of upheaval imaginable and completely overhauled her working process along the way. “There was change that needed to happen and it happened on this record,” she says. “Derailing my ego and insecurities allowed me to give these songs the attention they deserved.” The artist admits that finding the proper treatment for bipolar 2 disorder radically altered her mindset, freeing her from a cycle of paranoia and insecurity about her work. “Being able to finally navigate that opened the door for me to write about it,” she says. Even small changes like listening to music instead of the news first thing in the morning “made me want to write and bring that pleasure to other people.” Ultimately, Sugaregg is a testament that profound change can yield profound results — in this case, the most expressive and powerful music of Bognanno’s career. “This is me longing to see the bigger picture, motivated and eager for contentment in the best way,” she says. “I hope the happy-go-lucky / fuck-it-all attitude shines through some of these songs because I really did feel like I was reentering a place I hadn’t been to in a while and was excited to be back there.”
