Alicia Bognanno’s First Throat-Ripping Scream

Alicia Bognanno’s First Throat-Ripping Scream

Nashville upstarts Bully opened the festival’s third stage right around lunchtime and still drew a crowd, an impressive feat. Really, though, they’re an ideal festival band — rough and rugged but still quick to launch into a big, giddy hook. And in frontwoman Bognanno, they’ve got one of the great rock singers to come along in recent memory, an expressive howler whose just-rolled-out-of-bed demeanor contrasts awesomely with the straight-up power she brings to her choruses. Bully is very close to being Bognanno’s solo project; she sings and plays guitar and writes the songs and records and engineers the records. She’s got the vision for all that, and she’s also a total star. She won’t be relegated to the early-afternoon festival slot for long.