Nashville-based Bully is onto something special. Many music fans yearn for what they listened to growing up — or even what their parents listened to growing up. But with myriad Internet think pieces asking if rock is dead, Bully’s debut cries out in retaliation: “Not yet.”
Bursting forth with “I Remember,” Feels Like’s seminal track encompasses the feel of the entire record in less than two minutes. You can nearly see Bully ripping through this jam and frontwoman Alicia Bognanno brutalizing the mic in a friend’s garage. “Trash,” another favorite, spills the emotion at a slower pace. Featuring a prominent bassline that accentuates the calm verses, its choruses break down and release a deep anger. The single chorus lyric “This love feels like trash” is all that’s needed to communicate Bognanno’s pain of a past relationship.
While the album is great to put on and rock out to, standout tracks are hard to come by. Each song seems to exhibit one of two vibes: upbeat and happy, or slower and melancholic. This results in songs meshing together and the occasional loss of interest from the audience.
Yet with Feels Like, Bully has made its mark. In comparison to rock’s other current young bandleaders, Bognanno is simultaneously raw and sophomoric. She bounces seamlessly between softer, higher singing and grating screams with an energy that hints at Bully’s potential to grow beyond the output of this release.
Unfortunately, for an album that’s only 31 minutes long, it tends to drag on at times. Nevertheless, Bully is one of those bands that gives me faith that rock ‘n’ roll and its derivatives will never die. Their garage-meets-grunge sound is simple, but effective; there’s a familiarity to the fuzz, and it’s a definite recommended listen for rock fans seeking new music.