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For as long as most can remember, the push and pull of corporate interests and mentalities into underground scenes has created a sense of distrust, suspicion, smoke and mirrors. Revisiting previous work under a different guise, BODEGA are back to poke at the sometimes suspiciously shiny underbelly of alternative music culture. Check out our latest Upset cover story.
Words: Sam Taylor.
Photos: Pooneh Ghana.
NYC indie-rock trailblazers BODEGA are back with a new record… sort of. ‘Our Brand Could Be Yr Life’ – due 12th April via their new label, Chrysalis (Laura Marling, Liz Phair) – sees the endlessly inventive group revisit Ben Hozie (guitars, vocals) and Nikki Belfiglio’s (keys, percussion, vocals) old band Bodega Bay’s one and only album for a complete overhaul. A thematically rich concept piece about corporate mentality infiltrating underground scenes, the new set sees them take those initial ideas and expand on them in new and exciting ways. It’s teased by early single ‘Tarkovski’ (“A pun on the famous Russian director and skiing,” Ben explains), out now.
Hi Ben! How’s it going? What are you up to today?
I’m doing good. Nikki [Belfiglio] and I are actually working on the edit of a new music video today.
You’ve got a new album! Congrats. The concept sounds really interesting, it’s a rework of a previous project? How much of the original is still there?
We’ve been thinking about this project as a ‘remake’ in the same way a director might remake one of their earlier films (or adapt a novel, etc.). The original 2015 thirty-three-track album was twofold: 1. It was sort of a concept album about the current state of American indie rock, and 2. A compilation/collection of what I thought were my best songs from 2012-2015, which is when I feel like I found my BODEGA songwriting voice.
Almost all of the songs are originally from the Bodega Bay album, but in many cases, we completely rewrote the arrangements, riffs, and lyrics to reflect our current interests. For example, ‘ATM’ has nearly identical lyrics to the original but the music is completely different. The original was sort of a trad punker whereas the new one is a bit more in the Beasties-cum-James Joyce ‘Broken Equipment’ style. Another like ‘Cultural Consumer III’ has a very similar arrangement but an additional verse, a guitar solo, some extra call-and-response guitar, and piano riffs.
When producing the sessions, I started by thinking of the original ‘Bay’ recordings as demos to develop further.
Do you spend much time reconsidering your work, generally?
I think so. Painters get to rework the same image(s) from multiple angles, and I don’t see why bands cannot. I never really think of a particular recording as the ‘canonical’ version; rather, it’s just a document of where the band is at this moment. We recycle many of our themes, images, and progressions. Style = self-plagiarism.
How have you guys changed since that first release? Have you experienced much personal evolution?
The more I learn about music/making records, the less I feel I know. That’s good, though. I like constantly being a student.
Replaying these old songs feels both like revisiting old friends but also revisiting older states of mind. The ‘Ben’ who wrote these songs is not really who I am now, but I like summoning him as a reminder of the original intent/ideal of the band.
And musically, what have been the key lessons you’ve learnt since then?
I’ve always been invested in a certain type of pop formalism, but lately, I’m more interested in melody and chord changes than the rhythmic single-note hooks of the minimal post-punk style of our last two records. This so happens to coincide with the kind of power pop (Beatle moves + punk ‘tude) I was writing for ‘Bodega Bay’.
For example, the opening track ‘Dedicated To The Dedicated’ has some nice modulations that I think follow the emotional arc of the song well. It’s sort of a milestone track for me personally because it uses the literary/wordy ‘Broken Equipment’ songwriting approach but is less static harmonically/texturally.
Nikki and I have also been conscious of using more negative space in our tracks. Because of how dense our songs can be text-wise, we realise it’s quite good to allow for more instrumental bliss-out moments, such as the extended outro in ‘Stain Gaze’ and the jam in ‘Tarkovski’. We’ve done a lot of live extended instrumental improvisation in the past but have never really pulled it off on record until now. Dan Ryan’s guitar playing has really elevated these tracks in that regard. The lead improvisations he does over the drone jam in ‘Tarkovski’ and the guitar/piano work in ‘City is Taken’ are some of my favourite parts to be on a BODEGA disc.
“We’ve been thinking about this project as a ‘remake’ in the same way a director might remake one of their earlier films”
Ben Hozie
You’ve described ‘Endless Scroll’, ‘Broken Equipment’ and ‘Our Brand Could Be Yr Life’ as forming a trilogy of thematic unity – how does the narrative lay out across the releases?
On ‘Our Brand’, we are introduced to the cultural consumer and his disillusionment with the corporate mentality of millennial youth culture /// the cultural consumer goes online and is shocked at the broader political and personal ramifications on ‘Endless Scroll’ /// ‘Broken Equipment’ was an attempt at locating the origins of the cultural consumer’s consciousness (historically, philosophically, personally).
When it comes to the ‘corporate mentality’ in indie rock, how do you balance the more commercial sides of being a band with staying true to your artistic vision?
People talk about art and the selling of the art as if they are two entirely separate things. Every aspect of how a band produces work and functions impacts the aesthetic of their work. We have been getting better about seizing the means of our own production (we produced this record ourselves) and are also constantly thinking of better ways to present (i.e. sell) ourselves. In general, I think bands tend to paradoxically be more inviting (i.e. ‘commercial’) when they are doing whatever they want and ignoring whatever is expected of them.
Have you seen much change in the corporate mentality of underground/indie rock since the project was first released? How have the themes aged?
The technology has changed. People often talk about how technology is this blank tool that can be used for either good or bad. We’d have to be incredibly naive to not realise that technology is also built with a specific ideology in mind. For example, if you build a weapon, its function is to maim/harm. That’s it. Web 2.0 was designed to control consciousness and encourage low-labour content creation. Social media ‘content creators’ and the new 9-5 worker drones. That’s not a conspiracy. It’s hard to use these tools without being ‘used’ in the process. I’m not against social media, absolutely. We must reveal the scaffolding before we can imagine new ways of being.
You say the best critique is self-critique. Did making the album make you look at anything you currently do differently?
Yes. ‘Broken Equipment’ was really influenced by four things: 1. Continental philosophy 2. Hip-hop 3. Bob Dylan 4. ‘Ulysses’
What do those things have in common? Words, words, words.
I’m glad we explored that route (and it makes sense we did so during the pandemic), but I have come to see the limitations of that text-based approach where funky riffs and folky chord progressions are mainly static backdrops to the wordplay.
Our new drummer, Adam Shumski, and bass player, Adam See, really brought a new type of dynamic playing to this disc that moves further from the ‘humans playing a loop’ approach we were working with in 2020/2021.
I love the ‘Broken Equipment’ concept and record for what it is, but we can’t really go any further in that style.
There’s usually a track or two on a record that point the way forward to the next one. ‘Name Escape’ and ‘Truth is Not Punishment’ from ‘Endless Scroll’ were probably the most influential on our path to ‘Broken Equipment’ whereas ‘Statuette on the Console’ and ‘How Can I Help Ya?’ lead to our current power pop fascination.
“The ‘Ben’ who wrote these songs is not really who I am now”
Ben Hozie
With social media and the demands on artists to constantly make content, the creep of the ‘band as a brand’ feels like it’s only going further. Do you think there’s any chance of dialling it back at this point?
It’s important to remember that the current screen-based social media paradigm is only a phase. It will soon be replaced by something else like augmented reality, where we’ll all wear some kind of apparatus that allows us to access the ‘Internet’ in a virtual 3-D space. I think live band performances will become more and more precious as recordings become more and more perfected (by studio tools and AI). Curation, I think, is key. Over-sharing is a path to cult of personality fame, but not necessarily to great art.
Can you tell us a bit about the brand new songs you’ve written for the album?
‘City is Taken’ was originally written for ‘Broken Equipment’, but we didn’t quite get the arrangement right until the sessions for this album. I think its lyrics and moody instrumentation make a fitting closer and add a seriousness to the second side. ‘GND Deity,’ while not on the original Bodega Bay album, was Nikki’s first song she wrote for Bodega Bay (in 2016) and carries a lot of importance to her. We’ve been playing it off and on for years, but it was heavily reworked for this disc. It’s probably my favourite song of hers.
We initially released a book to accompany the original ‘Our Brand Could Be Your Life’ album that was printed in the style of the 33+1/3 books (where a famous album is contemplated for one hundred or so pages). On the opening page, we printed ‘Dedicated To The Dedicated’, so I decided to write a new song with that title. It’s meant to function as a prologue to the album and is dedicated to all of the people who dare to be obnoxious by standing up for something that is not currently the status quo.
You’ve emphasised a departure from ‘post-punk’ to become more ‘genre-fluid’. Was this a natural evolution or a conscious decision?
On tour, I found it way more rewarding to sing our melodic songs (such as ‘Jack In Titanic’ or ‘Charlie’) than to bark/shout some of the others. I like a bratty, in-your-face shout vocal, but I’d like there to be more balance. I’m as influenced by Paul McCartney as Mark E Smith.
You’ve talked about emphasising hooks and pop/rock-style songwriting. Is there anything you tried when writing the album you thought was too much, or did you push it as far as you could?
No. We let it all hang out.
The first single from the project is ‘Tarkovski’ – why lead with that one? What is it about Tarkovsky, in particular, that draws you in?
I was editing a film called ‘Annunciation’ in late 2013 (I also direct films) while reading Tarkovsky’s book ‘Sculpting in Time.’ It’s a very inspiring book where he talks passionately about how film ideas should only come directly from the experience of their director and not quote other films or artworks. Tarkovsky was really interested in translating his own personal dreams into scenes (as in his great movie ‘Mirror’). However, I realised that he broke his rules quite a bit in his own films (they are full of references to famous paintings, for example**). As a philosophically minded artist, I’ve always been conscious of the fact that theory can only take you so far. At the end of the day, art-making often involves chance. You do first and think later. As Godard said, we ‘seek the definitive by chance.’
It also has an incredible Dan Ryan guitar solo.
** To be charitable to Tarkovsky, I now realise he was alluding to famous paintings because of the personal significance they had for him. You can make allusion-based art for other reasons than meta-based academic formal games.
You work a lot of humour into Bodega’s music, is there a line or concept you’re particularly proud of including on this album?
The skits always crack me up. There are several discarded BODEGA songs that the cultural consumer comes across on the radio (in the skit after ‘Cultural Consumer III’) that always make me smile. An underrated life experience is making yourself laugh.
Is there anything else we should know?
All of the singles come with non-album B-sides that, to us, are just as important as the album tracks. ‘Tarkovski’ is paired with ‘Adaptation Of The Truth About Marie’ (an ‘adaptation’ of the incredible Touissant novel ‘The Truth About Marie’). For now, the B-sides are available only at Bandcamp, so head there if you want to check ’em out. ■
Bodega’s album ‘Our Brand Could Be Yr Life’ is out 12th April. Follow Upset’s Spotify playlist here.
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