SUGAREGG

What prevents Sugaregg – Bully’s third album, and Bognanno’s first as a totally solo entity – from feeling like a period piece is that the retro approach isn’t exclusively put to the service of buoyant, indelible tunes. Instead, Bognanno uses this mercurial mode to record her experiences with bipolar disorder. The theme leads to another set of opposites surfacing in the lyrics, a series of starkly frank psychological insights that are at once coldly analytical and wildly evocative.

‘SUGAREGG’ is eminently aware of its own fragility under its candy-coated shell, and with it a candid recognition of the fleeting nature of happiness and the work required to hold onto it.

‘SUGAREGG’ is confident and assured.

It’s essentially Bully’s re-introduction as a solo project, and these 12 songs capture the invigorating energy of the band’s 2015 debut.

SUGAREGG is not without its moments of doubt and misfires. Regardless, it’s a product of its context, an artefact indicative of a change in intent and perspective by its creator. It’s a product full of joy, not maddening, but genuinely uplifting and encouraging. It’s also the best thing Bognanno has written.

Bully’s third album is nonetheless breezy, it’s unapologetic in its raggedness, and even if they aren’t exactly reinventing the wheel they still align perfectly with each other and support Bognanno wonderfully. Bully are still pushing the painful narrative begun on Feels Like, and SUGAREGG is a continuation of those themes in a way that works powerfully for them.

While it seemingly ends in the same place it starts (Bognanno singing on loop “I don’t know what I wanted” isn’t really a positive ending), this is Bully’s best project yet, lacing all of their marvelous qualities into a candid and catchy molotov cocktail.

The album sounds even more emphatically Bully, with many of its hooky and grungy, visceral tracks examining the end and aftermath of a relationship.

The songs are shinier now. The dark clouds packaged with silver linings are more buffed and polished. That seems to be the result of having John Congleton (St. Vincent, Sleater-Kinney, the War on Drugs, Modest Mouse) produce and engineer the record instead of Bognanno doing everything herself.

Simply put, Bully knows how to make music for feeling young and utterly confused, sometimes hopeless, and ultimately, completely alive.

The record flows, hitting knee-skinning highs like “Stuck in Your Head” (“I just wanted to pick up the tempo!” Bognanno sing-songs as the band counts off), barn-burners like “You” (about, it seems, an absent parent) and the hauntingly discordant “Hours and Hours.” Whatever the subject matter, whatever the tempo, each track finds Bognanno full-throated, wild and free.