Bodega
Our Brand Could Be Yr Life (Chrysalis Records)
by Scott Deckman
Bodega are a band on a mission, and that mission includes warning society about the depersonalization effects of rampant technology, the culture of consumerism, and the cultural consumer themselves. In their view, we’re trained to click and consume, with much of the wares being soulless, disposable effluvium driven by corporate greed. But there’s another type of consumer in the band’s sight, one who consumes elitist art because of the need to feel virtuous, no matter how much buying the canon or staying on top of the latest tour de force effects their life negatively. This one is closer to home for the group. Bodega takes aim at all three subjects on third album, Our Brand Could Be Yr Life. With the abstruseness of their lyrics, it’s hard to suss out exactly what they’re going for, but maybe their secret, that abstraction, is to make us try and perform textual analysis.
In an interview just before the release of the record on UK website whynow, bandmember Nikki Belfiglio described the term “cultural consumer” as the conglomerate character of the group. This is definitely the most concept-oriented full-length release of theirs (both previous albums take a dip in this pool), but it’s also the most mainstream sounding. And that’s a relative term with these philosophically inclined art rockers. In the end, the band seems to be pushing for organic, existential living — be yourself, no matter if you’re a hipster know-it-all or some random guy on the street. Scrolling on your iPhone with Apple Pay at the ready might be the current condition, but be like Cheap Trick and “don’t give yourself away.”
Opener “Dedicated to the Dedicated” is about as close to a traditional rock song as I’ve heard from them. Until “Bodega Bait” that is, which is a rock song with guitars and everything (imagine that?). Ben Hozie doesn’t have a quotidian rock voice, and is one of those frontmen who make sing-speaking work (his whiteboy funk is preferable to Anthony Kiedis, and Hozie only gets down sparingly). He can write lyrics, too, even if understanding his voice at times can be a pain (this goes double for Belfiglio). Check out this quatrain from “Dedicated to the Dedicated”: “It took some ticks of time/To learn the vanities I see/In you I most despise/Are what I most despise in me.”
Good stuff.
Whatever else has changed for these lefties, the band still has an ’80s sheen on much of its guitar work: see single “Tarkovski,” which has a post-punk extended ax passage over a pop-rock beat that wouldn’t sound out of place on Sonic Youth’s Rather Ripped. This ain’t your mama’s Bodega. The songwriting is solid, though one is surprised at the down-tuned production being that they were just signed to Chrysalis Records. I wonder if they had to fight the label on that.
Hozie can write hooks that are immediately catchy. “Stain Gaze” features almost Dinosaur Jr.-level guitars. It’s like I’m listening to the Flaming Lips or something. Forget dork rock, this band is headed for Mudhoney opener status. You do notice the lack of a Belfiglio pop vehicle though: there’s no punk-nerd star turn like on Broken Equipment’s “Statuette on the Console.” And when she does sing, it’s usually something annoying like “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Drum,” a twitchy post-punky ditty some will favor, but not me.
Another subject the group concerns itself with is the mixture of art and commerce, with Hozie talking about theory, name-dropping artistic heavyweights like Cézanne, van Gogh, and Tarkovsky. While important, these queries kind of pale in the age of conspicuous warfare and proposed 15-minute cities. He even brings religion into the fold at the end of the disc, with the final song in the cultural consumer triumvirate featuring vague lyrics about the Dalai Lama, having the Tibetan spiritual leader call the apostle Paul a — what else — cultural consumer. Again, with the band’s sometimes-unintelligible lyrics and their vagueness, I’d suggest searching for them online and reading along while listening. You’ll get more out of it, and you may understand the record better than this reviewer.
It is kind of funny musing on the fact that Bodega rails on and on about the dark reality of technology and consumerism when they are part of the patina: a rock band which sells records that depend on tech and people using mass-marketed phones and computers to hear said music. Like the automated voice on “Bodega Bait” says, “What is the difference between an artist and an advertiser?” And now on revamped Chrysalis, it makes you realize that whatever your intentions, the system has its talons in all of us. And the band also has to laugh at the ads playing between its songs on Spotify, or maybe not. But again, on Our Brand Could Be Yr Life, Bodega seems to be critiquing themselves as much as the culture they abhor.
Most bands aren’t worth listening to. Contradictions aside, whether playing outré new wave or more conventional guitar rock — or even blathering on about cultural consumers and academic theory — Bodega is worth your time.
