SOLD OUT: Bully

Tue Sep 07 2021 at 08:00 pm to Wed Sep 08 2021 at 12:00 am

| Portland

Mississippi Studios
Publisher/HostMississippi Studios
SOLD OUT: Bully
About this Event

ALL SALES ARE FINAL. PLEASE, DOUBLE CHECK YOUR ORDER BEFORE PURCHASING. NO REFUNDS.

MOSTLY STANDING / LIMITED BALCONY SEATING

DOORS 7PM / SHOW 8PM

$22.50 ADV & DOS

THIS EVENT IS 21+

VALID U.S. ID OR PASSPORT REQUIRED FOR ENTRY

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Bully

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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 those expectations.”

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 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.”


Event Photos

LIGHTNING BUG

In the third week of August 2019, along the windy coastline of southern Washington, musician and singer Audrey Kang arrived at a festival of kites. She made the stop during a trek across the Pacific Northwest, where she camped, hiked, surfed, and wandered alone in the area’s lush natural reserves. “I get a lot of inspiration from nature,” she says. “If I look at the sky and do a lot of nothing in nature alone—I don’t know. The songs just come.” The trip followed a series of endings in her life—work, love, relationships—that felt like an upheaval. Yet Audrey found peace and contentment there on the coast. “I really didn’t know what my life was going to look like,” she remembers. “But at the kite festival, I knew that each day I’d see a lot of beautiful kites, and each evening I’d watch the sunset and sleep on the beach. I felt like nothing could hurt me.”

What Audrey experienced during that trip, what she realized while watching the kites, would plant the seeds for A Color of the Sky, the third album by her band Lightning Bug. A record equally about quiet introspection and broad existential questions, A Color of the Sky reflects the journey of its songwriter emerging from intense self-doubt to find herself changed. “I trusted no one, and was very unhappy with who I was,” Audrey shares. “The key shift in my psyche was the realization that I was the sole person responsible for my life and happiness. That life holds no more and no less than the very purpose you give it yourself.” She illustrates this realization in rich emotional detail on opening song “The Return,” where unadorned guitars waver timidly over sparse drums before slowly transforming into a tapestry of synth, flute, strings, and Audrey’s soft-glowing voice.

Growth and self-acceptance have rarely sounded so otherworldly—yet still so intimate—as they do across A Color of the Sky. Lead single “The Right Thing Is Hard To Do” brings together a dreamy country motif with Lightning Bug’s boundless guitar pop to transportive effect. As Audrey examines her struggles with vulnerability and self-worth, connecting those personal issues with global ones, the music sways and glimmers like water in moonlight. It’s followed by the enchanting “September Song, pt. ii”, which embodies the crisp clarity brought on by the transition to fall. A bed of finger-plucked guitars surround Audrey’s hushed lines about the colors of sunsets, the truth that change brings—only to be swept away in a rush of pattering drums, downy synth pads, and heavy bass. It feels as much like a vivid portrait of the changing seasons as it does a cathartic psychedelic experience. Kicking off the record’s second half, “Song of the Bell” rolls in like a ghostly fog, billowing with blown-out guitar noise and haunted by layers of wispy vocal melodies. The song quickly dissipates, as if evaporated by the sun—its questions of self-actualization and fulfillment lingering in the air long after.

Unsurprisingly for an album about transforming one’s inner world, A Color of the Sky follows after Lightning Bug’s outer world changed as well. Their 2019 album October Song caught the attention of longstanding indie label Fat Possum, who reissued the LP and signed the band onto their roster. Audrey and her collaborators, Kevin Copeland (guitar, vocals) and Logan Miley (engineer, synths, textures), also added new members to their live band, who joined them in recording for the first time. Along with Dane Hagen (drums) and Vincent Puleo (bass), Lightning Bug turned a rundown old house in the Catskills into a makeshift studio. But despite the new surroundings and opportunities, some things didn’t change at all. “We stuck to the same DIY, our-own-world approach as previous records,” Audrey elaborates on their recording process. Which seems abundantly clear listening to A Color of the Sky. This isn’t a young band searching for its identity, but rather a cohesive group of artists honing their sound to perfection.

Lightning Bug recording together as a live band helped make A Color of the Sky feel more organic, dynamic, and full than their previous albums. It also enhanced Audrey’s newfound sense of clarity and confidence in her songwriting. “Songs in the past sometimes felt muddled, or I felt lost where to take them,” she elaborates. “But for this one, each song felt like a whole entity from conception.” The change is undeniable. Her voice is more pronounced than ever, the arrangements streamlined, the messages more palpable—all in service of an immersive emotional resonance. “I want listeners to explore their own interior worlds,” she concludes. “It’s about learning to trust yourself, about being deeply honest with yourself, and about how self-acceptance yields a selfless form of love.”

Event Venue

Portland

Tickets

USD 22.50

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