One of The Spin's favorite tropes in Western literature is the hero’s return. Going back to Homer’s Odyssey (and really, any story worth its salt, written down or not), we've always enjoyed it when an adventurer finds their way back to the place they started from, equipped with all the experience they’ve picked up on their journey. Remember how Odysseus confronted his wife's suitors, who were lined up outside his house when he got back to Ithaca? This is the part when shit gets real, as the kids say. (If you happened to sleep through that class, he slaughters all of said suitors.)
In the adventure that is Music City rock ’n’ roll, Bully is the hero of the day. Thursday night, Bully frontwoman Alicia Bognanno & Co. kicked off a three-day run at Mercy Lounge, their first shows in Nashville in more than a year (not counting a recent Grimey's in-store celebrating the release of Losing, their superb new LP for Sub Pop, which came in at No. 3 in our annual Top Local Albums poll). Western Medication and Adia Victoria, two other Nashville artists who are always worthy of our attention, were scheduled to kick things off, so there was no way we were going to skip out on this scene.
As we hovered around the bar a little before the show, a perfectly curated mix featuring Le Tigre, New Order and X-Ray Spex rumbled from the P.A. Promptly at 8:30 p.m., the Western Medication boys lumbered up to the stage, adjusting knobs in preparation to take Music City straight to Madchester. The group has a new LP slated for an early-2018 release, and it harkens back to The Stone Roses, early Primal Scream and other such purveyors of ragged psychedelia. “Taste,” one of the new tracks the group broke out for the Mercy crowd, is a faux-sitar wah-wah jam in the vein of English janglers Black Grape. If this set was any indication, 2018 will be the year Western Meds take over.
The crowd began to swell as Adia Victoria’s band stepped up to the plate. As the singer sauntered up to take her mic, claps and screams erupted from the crowd down front. Our expectations were also high — her work is consistently insightful, nuanced and uncompromising, and her recent Baby Blues EP continues that trend. Her set didn’t disappoint. The mightily charismatic Victoria held the entire audience captive during her turn in the spotlight, a spacey, sultry trip-hop-blues voyage that lasted about 45 minutes.
During the set change, the room was teeming with rock fans eager for their Bully fix, and the band seemed excited to oblige, leading off with Losing's opening track “Feel the Same.” The cathartic bounce infected the fans and worked them into a kinetic frenzy, which the band followed by taking the tempo down a notch with their Pavement-esque slacker-rocker “Seeing It.” We’ve been watching Bully for four years now, but their well-honed chops never cease to amaze. You could forgive them for getting casual or even a bit sloppy at this homecoming date, but they remained finely tuned, cutting precision grooves and controlling the energy in the room with a finesse that few rock bands ever achieve.
For the majority of the show, Bully plowed through their dome-blowing catalog without pausing for a breath. Banter was at a minimum, with the notable exceptions of an open invitation to join them for a 2 a.m. screening of the new Star Wars movie (we had to pass, but we appreciated it anyway), as well as shout-outs to two critical nonprofits: The Oasis Center and Planned Parenthood. They wrapped the whole thing up with a cover of Mclusky's frenetic "Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues."
With so many bands looking back to the ’90s for inspiration right now, a lot of them lose themselves in piles of thrift-store flannel and riffs rehashed from fuzzy VHS cassettes of 120 Minutes. Bully might take hints from the Pixies, Fugazi and The Breeders, but every new song shows them adding more of their own hallmarks and making their sound more distinct — guitarist Clayton Parker’s dissonant hooks create an uneasy catchiness that we especially like. What makes Bully stand out in any crowd, though, is something that might seem very old-school and even very “Nashville”: outstanding songwriting that is enhanced by the sounds and performance techniques they use, rather than designed to fit an aesthetic established a quarter-century ago. It’s pretty damned awe-inspiring to watch them pick up the threads of grunge and make something entirely their own.
See our slideshow for more photos.
In The Spin — the Scene's live review column — staffers and freelance contributors review concerts under a collective byline.
