BODEGA - Our Brand Could Be Yr Life Review
Brooklyn group dabble in art punk glowerings with their best-sounding record to date.
Trimmed fine and proper, New York’s finest BODEGA have been connoisseurs to consumerism in more ways than one. Whether it was living city life through screens with 2018’s Endless Scroll or their more engaged melodic tact with Broken Equipment in 2022, BODEGA have very much been on the button with their spiky skewering of conscious punk. Bleached throughout, there has been an onslaught of wiry commentary, social and philosophical in nature.
Corporation. Consumerism. Brand. These are all buzz words that personify BODEGA’s brilliance – anchored by vocalists Ben Hozie and Nikki Belfiglio – as they encroach on society’s oddities and the way we have just come.. to accept them.
The brandification of mainstream society consumption has always been a hot topic the band have grappled with throughout their tenure. The group reprise their roles here with Our Brand Could Be Yr Life – a one-stop whistle tour as they tick off every sub-genre under the sun as means to make a very deliberate point.
Sparked stand-out Tarkovski is a staple indie-rock workout with Ryan’s whirling guitar solo sidled in. Bodega Bait swathes into slacker rock, while slow-burner Webster Hall swoons in shoegaze polishings. Pounding Set the Controls for the Heart of the Drum is a deliberately fun pounding of quirky dance-punk that harks back to the CBGB scene of the ’70s. ATM – whose imagery is echoed in the album’s provocative cover art, crafted by Belfiglio – is a play towards how transactional we’ve become when it comes to music. Less character; more business.
The record shifts into a familiarity among BODEGA fans as the middle-class bohemian figure Hozie uses to base his lyrics on, appears on the trio of expertly-crafted Cultural Consumer via the latter half. Hozie echoes, “He never once gazed upon / The chimes of freedom / Billboard reads, Culture / Consume, consume, consume.”
While the rest of the album was written in 2015 and rebooted with new vigour, only two songs were brand new to the record. Opener Dedicated to the Dedicated and album’s explosive finale, City Is Taken – lead by Nikki’s imploring laments – are arguably some of the bands’ best works to date, so is only testament to where the band were eight years ago and where they are now.
BODEGA’s Your Brand is a major statement in the bands’ pipeline as it toys, mocks and celebrates the rock subcultures of superficial with fastidious guitar overdrives and catchy vocal compulsions that sees the band laser-focused in design and deliverance.