Bully - Lucky For You (LP)

Lucky For You lands like a late night confession and a rallying cry at once, the kind of record you put on when the house is quiet and the thoughts are loud. Released on 2 June 2023 through Sub Pop, it finds Alicia Bognanno sharpening everything Bully does well, from the serrated guitars to the rush of melody that sneaks up and stays. She has always been the engine behind this project, a Nashville lifer with an audio engineering background and an early stint at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio, and that feel for sound matters here. The album is tighter, punchier, more luminous, but it never sands off the edges that make Bully cathartic.

Grief sits close to the centre. “Days Move Slow” was written after the death of Bognanno’s beloved dog, Mezzi, and you can hear the ache in the way the guitars bloom then hang back, like a breath caught in the throat. It is not maudlin. She leans into plainspoken lines and lets the chords do the heavy lifting, then a soaring hook lifts the whole thing into the kind of chorus that bends time for three minutes. It is one of the album’s finest moments, a reminder that the loudest feeling can arrive with patience.

Then there is “Lose You,” where Soccer Mommy drops in with harmonies that feel like a friend taking the passenger seat. The pairing makes perfect sense. Both artists understand how a sugary melody can ride shotgun with static and fuzz, and how a single vocal line can tilt a song toward the heart. Producer JT Daly works with Bognanno to frame those voices in a way that glows without going slick. You still get the snap of the snare and the bite of the pick on the strings, only now there is a wider sky sitting above it.

If you come to Bully for that rush of alt rock adrenaline, “Hard to Love” will sort you out. It sprints rather than strolls, all tangled guitars and a rhythm section that keeps kicking forward. Bognanno’s voice, a mix of rasp and resolve, feels athletic here. She sounds like she is dead set on scraping something off and breaking through. That drive runs across the record. Even when the tempo dips, there is a sense of motion that pushes the songs into each other like chapters in a messy, honest story.

What makes Lucky For You stick is how it balances laceration and light. Compared with SUGAREGG, which already hinted at a broader palette, this set leans harder into colour. The distortion still scuffs the walls, but the hooks are brighter and the arrangements are more considered. You can tell a studio head is steering the ship. Bognanno’s engineering instincts keep the guitars fat without clogging the picture, and the vocals sit just close enough to feel conversational. She sounds present, even when the lyrics tilt toward memory and loss.

The cultural moment seeps in without turning the record into a manifesto. Bognanno has long folded anxiety, frustration and hope into her writing, and the way she does it here feels grounded in the day to day. It is the kind of rock record that remembers how a walk, a headline, a phone buzzing at 2 am can change your orbit. Critics noticed. The album drew warm notices from places like Pitchfork, The Guardian and NME, with a lot of praise for the songwriting’s clarity and the way the production opens things up without muting the sting.

If you’re thinking about picking up Lucky For You vinyl, do it. Bully vinyl tends to reward volume, and these songs love a living room stereo. The dynamics breathe in a way streaming flattens, those choruses in “Days Move Slow” and “Lose You” widening into the room. For collectors building a shelf of Bully albums on vinyl, this one sits nicely next to Feels Like and Losing, a clear next step that still feels raw. And yeah, if you need to buy Bully records online, keep an eye on your favourite Melbourne record store or the better corners of vinyl records Australia. There is something about dropping the needle on this album that makes the whole point of the format click. It is music built for touch and air and a little bit of grit.

Lucky For You doesn’t try to reinvent Bully, it refines the focus. The songs are tighter, the emotions closer to the surface, the production dialled so the light gets in. Put it on and let it run. It feels lived in by the second spin, and by the third it has taken up a corner of your winter.