Mia Zapata was the greatest rock singer of her time. She may have likely been the greatest blues singer in punk rock history, the woman who married the 78 and the ’78. Tragedy did not make this true. Mia Zapata made this true, and the ferocious, spring-loaded shrapnel frame that was built around her by Andy Kessler (guitar: metronomic and furious), Matt Dresdner (bass: fluid, punching, beat-addicted and melodic), and Steve Moriarty (drums: martial and explosive) - who, with Mia, combined to form The Gits - made it true.

The Gits were formed at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio in mid-1986, grabbing and swapping pieces of art, thrash, noise, punk rock, classic rock, and all the sorts of magical silly and bookish jingle bells that an old-school liberal arts education handed you; for the next few years they worked on turning it all into something tough, sensitive, both brutal and kind. Andy, Matt, Mia, and Steve moved to Seattle in middish 1989, landing in a house on Capitol Hill where they (and fellow travelers) wood-shedded and rehearsed for the next few years. The Gits put out three EPs in 1990 and ’91 before signing with C/Z Records and releasing their first full-length album,' Frenching the Bully'. Seattle quickly claimed the quartet as their own and embraced the Gits blend of ferocious fangs and soft heart, the slug/slap of the guitars, and the gorgeous, soft underbelly of the poetic emotions. These qualities not only fit in with the doe-eyed/sharp-clawed grunge ethos but earned the Gits the respect of their peers, including Nirvana, who tapped them to open a major local show in 1990. Then other stuff happened, and their frantic, confessional barbed-heart snowball began rolling up hill very, very fast; the Gits “quickly” (hah! After half a decade learning to implode and explode hearts and stomping their boots on manifold beer-softened, Marlboro-weeded wood stages!) inspired rapture, awe, and the levitation that happened when peak emotion meets peak grindage in front of amps spitting out something that sounded like the mad marriage of Bolan swagger and Dischord tension… all fronted by a genuinely incomparable woman who held her heart in her mouth and shared it, in all its celebration and fear, without hesitation. The Gits were an angry, inflamed slinky fully in tune with and tuned by the Bessie Patti Smith of her time, truly the only singer who could summon Joplin, Poly Styrene, Sam Cooke, Iggy Pop and Ian MacKaye all in the same goddamn song.


In 1993, less than four weeks after accepting an offer from Atlantic Records, Mia died. I leave it at that, because this is not about death; it’s about an extraordinary life. I do not say, “You should have been there,” I say, “We are lucky so many of us were, and I am so glad we have this extraordinary evidence of the power and gifts of Mia and the Gits that you now can hold in your hands.” And I note that Frenching the Bully, this extraordinary testament to the soul, shock, fury and feeling of the Gits, has been long out of print on vinyl and CD, and this new edition - remastered by legendary Seattle engineer Jack Endino - joyfully rectifies that.

TRACK LISTING

1. Absynthe
2. Another Shot Of Whiskey
3. Insecurities
4. Slaughter Of Bruce
5. Kings And Queens
6. It All Dies Anyway
7. While You’re Twisting I’m Still Breathing
8. A
9. Wingo Lamo
10. Spear And Magic Helmet
11. Cut My Skin It Makes Me Human
12. Here's To Your Fuck
13. Second Skin

Lucky For You is Bully’s most close-to-the-bone album yet. It’s an album that’s searing and unmistakably marked by its creator’s experiences, while still retaining the massive sound that Alicia Bognanno has become known for over the last decade. Her fourth album draws from personal pain and the universal struggle that is existing, learning, and moving on—and it’s all soundtracked by Bognanno’s rock-solid melodic sensibilities and a widescreen sound that’s impossible to pin down when it comes to the textures explored.

These ten songs are simply the most irresistible Bognanno’s put to tape yet, making Lucky For You her greatest triumph to date in a career already packed with them. Work on Lucky For You began last year, when Bognanno brought some in-progress demos to producer J.T. Daly in his Nashville studio to see if they could strike creative kismet. “Authenticity is always on my mind, without even knowing it,” she explains while discussing their recording process together. “It was great with J.T., because I could tell he was a genuine fan who wanted to emphasize what’s actually good about my writing instead of changing it. I could tell how much he cared about the project, and it meant alot to me.” The album came together over the course of seven months, the longest gestation process for a Bully record to date, but that time allowed inspiration to emerge in new ways.

The result is a kaleidoscopic rock record spanning punk’s grit, the crunchy bliss of shoegaze, explosive Britpop, and the type of classic anthems Bully has been known for. Lucky For You’s thematic focus zooms in on grief and loss: The record is largely inspired by Bognanno’s dog and best friend Mezzi passing away, at a time when her life already felt as if in metamorphosis. The oceanic first single “Days Move Slow” was written shortly after Mezzi’s passing, reflecting the persistence of Bognanno’s incisive wit in the face of adversity. “There was nothing I could do except sit down and write it, and it felt so good.” And then there’s the passionate opening track “All I Do,” which kicks in the door with huge riffs atop her lyrical reflections on three years of sobriety.

"Once I stopped drinking, I felt like I was still haunted by mistakes and things that had happened when I was drinking, and it’s still taking me a long time to forget about that while existing in this house. How do I shed the skin from a path I’ve moved on from?” In that vein, Lucky For You is a document of perseverance in the face of the big and the small stuff. “I’m so overly emotional and sensitive, it’s a blessing and a curse” she says with a laugh, but there’s no downside to her expressions of vulnerability on this record; it’s the latest bit of evidence that nothing can hold Bognanno back.

TRACK LISTING

1. All I Do
2. Days Move Slow
3. A Wonderful Life
4. Hard To Love
5. Change Your Mind
6. How Will I Know
7. A Love Profound
8. Lose You (feat. Soccer Mommy)
9. Ms. America
10. All This Noise

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.”

SUGAREGG roars from the speakers and jumpstarts both heart and mind. Like My Bloody Valentine after three double espressos, opener “Add It On” zooms heavenward within seconds, epitomizing Bognanno’s newfound clarity of purpose, while the bass-driven melodies and propulsive beats of “Where to Start” and “Let You” are the musical equivalents of the sun piercing through a perpetually cloudy sky.

On songs like the strident “Every Tradition” and “Not Ashamed,” Bognanno doesn’t shy away from addressing “how I feel as a human holds up against what society expects or assumes of me as a woman, and what it feels like to naturally challenge

But amongst the more dense topics, there’s also a lightheartedness that was lacking on Bully’s last album, 2017’s Losing. Pointing to “Where to Start,” “You” and “Let You,” Bognanno says “there are more songs about erratic, dysfunctional love in an upbeat way, like, ‘I’m going down and that’s the only way I want to go because the momentary joy is worth it.’”

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, pointing to the sweet, swirly “Like Fire” and slower, more contemplative songs such as “Prism” and “Come Down” as having been born of this new headspace. 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.”

An unexpected foray into the film world also helped set the table for Sugaregg when Bognanno was asked to write songs for the 2019 movie Her Smell, starring Elisabeth Moss as the frontwoman of the fictional rock band Something She. “It got me motivated to play music again after the last album,” she says. “I loved reading the script and trying to think, what music would the character write? People asked if I’d play those songs with Bully but the whole point was for them to not be Bully songs. It was nice to get my head out of my own ass for a second and work on a project for someone else,” she says with a laugh.

A highly accomplished engineer who ran the boards herself on the first two Bully albums, Bognanno was ready to be free “from the weight of feeling like I had to prove to the world I was capable of engineering a record, and wanted to be content knowing for myself what I can do without needing the approval of others to validate that.”

So for SUGAREGG, she yielded recording and mixing responsibilities to outside collaborators for the first time and trekked to the remote Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minn., an unexpected return to her home state. Behind the console was John Congleton, a Grammy-winner who has worked with everyone from St. Vincent and Sleater-Kinney to The War on Drugs and Modest Mouse. “Naturally, I still had reservations, but John was sensitive to where I was coming from,” Bognanno says. “He was very respectful that I’d never worked with a producer before.”

The studio’s rich history (classics such as Nirvana’s In Utero, PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me and Superchunk’s Foolish were recorded there) and woodsy setting quickly put Bognanno’s mind at ease. Being able to bring her dog Mezzi along for the trip didn’t hurt either. “I had never tracked a record in the summer, so waking up and going outside with her before we started each day was a great way to refresh,” she says.

SUGAREGG features additional contributions from longtime touring drummer Wesley Mitchell and bassist Zach Dawes, renowned for his work on recent albums by Sharon Van Etten and Lana Del Rey. Dawes and Bognanno met at Pachyderm to work on parts just two days before tracking, “but it ended up being so much less stressful than I had expected and I loved it,” she see says. “Zach wanted to be there to help and make my vision happen.”

With 14 songs on tape, Bognanno and friends left Pachyderm thinking SUGAREGG was done. But once back home in Nashville, she realized there was more to be written, and spent the next five months doing exactly that. Moving to Palace Studios in Toronto with Graham Walsh (Alvvays, METZ, !!!), Bognanno and Mitchell recorded “Where to Start” and “Let You,” which proved to be two of the new album’s key tracks.

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.”

TRACK LISTING

Add It On
Every Tradition
Where To Start
Prism
You
Let You
Like Fire
Stuck In Your Head
Come Down
Not Ashamed
Hours And Hours
What I Wanted

In rock - as in life - change is unavoidable, often painful, but ultimately necessary, and Alicia Bognanno and her band Bully have dealt with a lot of it since their debut record Feels Like hit in 2015. Now with a new label and another couple years worth of life experience, the 12 new songs on Losing feel like perfect anthems for a generation still learning to harness the power of resistance.

With a vocal style that is as pretty as it is powerful, and emotionally resonant lyrics, Alicia channels the loss of innocence and reveals a raw honesty in songs that are distinctly hers. I love Bully the way I love Sebadoh, Dinosaur Jr and the Breeders. Their sound takes me back to the stripped down and thoughtfully engineered songs that haunt me long after they’re gone and never get old. Another good reason to be with Sub Pop, who have always been associated with music that is built to last. I feel like all my best work has been born of heartbreak and upheaval; maybe most musicians feel that way.

“The title of the record –Losing – kind of says it all,” Alicia says. “After being on the road so long and coming back to Nashville we all had a lot of changes going on in our personal lives that we were trying to deal with / adjust to and that was really the motivation for this one.” “Feel the Same” is about being stuck in the claustrophobia of a manic state of mind. It’s Alicia’s favorite song to scream.

“Seeing It,” she says, is about the unique anxiety and vigilance about personal safety that comes with being a woman: “Such a blurring place to be / stuck in your own body.” Lately Alicia has been lending her voice as an advocate for gun control, women's rights and speaking out in support of animal rights. In some ways my generation were in a bubble in the 90s; I never gave any thought to what Bill Clinton was up to, for instance – but in 2017, Losing sounds like a personal and necessary call to arms to me; we need rock n roll now more than ever.

TRACK LISTING

1. Feel The Same
2. Kills To Be Resistant
3. Running
4. Seeing It
5. Guess There
6. Blame
7. Focused
8. Not The Way
9. Spiral
10. Either Way
11. You Could Be Wrong
12. Hate And Control

After a slew of highly sought-after seven inches on Canada's collectable Bully Records, ElekTro4 and DJ Signify present their full length album. "Keystroke One" is made up of instrumental vignettes and thirty second edits that immediately remind one of DJ Shadow's formative experiments.