SUGAREGG

Chronique

After releasing her band's second album, Losing, in 2017, Bully's Alicia Bognanno made some adjustments to her approach to music. Getting treatment for bipolar II disorder led to a noticeable change in mindset, and she worked separately from her group after being tapped to write songs for the film Her Smell, about a fictional rock musician played by Elisabeth Moss. Bognanno later said the process of writing for someone else allowed her to get out of her own head. When she was ready to prepare material for Bully's third long-player, she also felt ready to relinquish control in the studio and work with an outside producer for the first time. The resulting SUGAREGG was recorded with the first-time backing lineup of bass player Zach Dawes (Lana Del Rey, Sharon Van Etten) and touring drummer Wesley Mitchell, with Grammy winner John Congleton overseeing production alongside Bognanno on all but two tracks. (Alvvays and METZ collaborator Graham Walsh co-produced late additions "Where to Start" and "Let You" at a separate studio.) If anything, the album sounds even more emphatically Bully, with many of its hooky and grungy, visceral tracks examining the end and aftermath of a relationship. It includes a song called "You," but all 12 songs employ the second-person pronoun. SUGAREGG kicks off with a dissonant chord and shout-singing on "Add It On," a frantic wail of a track with a wall of harmonic distortion and thrashing drums. Sections of the song tone things down, at least momentarily, as barely decipherable lyrics talk of being angry and words falling short. More-melodic entries quickly follow, including the acquiescing "Every Tradition," which admits "Nothing's changed for me/I never put the blame on you," and the hooky "Like Fire," whose churning alt-rock delivers an acerbic, payoff chorus. Elsewhere, the more-restrained "Prism" dials back the tempo but still offers tight, Weezer-like riffs. With its protagonist in distress but getting over it, SUGAREGG is a cathartic work that contains Bognanno's strongest group of songs to this point.

© Marcy Donelson /TiVo