News Bully

This Nashville group won’t steal your lunch money, but they might be saviours of scrappy garage punk.

Words: Jamie Milton
9th April 2014

Name

: Bully
Based: Nashville
Listen: bully.bandcamp.com
Similar to: Cloud Nothings

Nashville’s Bully have everything: The hooks, the dynamism, the face-melting force required to be an exciting garage punk band. And they’ve got the following. On a 2013 debut EP, they sold out of 700 pressings in a split-second. Scrappy on the outside, these songs still had a habit of acting like a real life bully, forcing you into a corner until you accepted fate and decided to play their music like it’s a muddy mark that doesn’t wash off.

New 7’ single ‘Milkman’ b/w ‘Faceblind’ goes further. It carries a more blitzing pace, with pop punk influences tearing through and splintering the surface. Primarily the project of Alicia Bognanno, it’s in her vocals that things get seriously exciting. Every screeching word audible above a thick racket of guitars, regardless of the crazed direction-changes these tracks tend to take off on, she holds her own. Consider this 2014’s answer to Cloud Nothings.

Milkman b/w Faceblind by Bully