There have been many exhilarating rock’n’roll bands who have emerged from New York since the turn of the century, but none quite like Bodega. A five-piece centred around a pair of creative dynamos (and real-life couple) in Ben Hozie and Nikki Belfiglio, Bodega combine the garage-rock swagger of The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ blend of barbed chaos and poetic poignancy, the arty oddness of Liars alongside an Interpol-ish erudition. The difference is that none of those bands grew out of a philosophical reading group who decided to turn their book club into a rock band.
Since the release of their debut Endless Scroll in 2018, the group’s playful, punky theologising has taken on an increasingly melodic shape and it culminates in the jangly power pop of their fourth record Our Brand Could Be Yr Life, an album that lands somewhere between R.E.M., Television, Ramones and Dinosaur Jr. Bodega still have the smarts, but now the hooks hit you first. It is both a giant leap forward and a record that reaches deep into the band’s past. These songs were originally recorded in a much more DIY manner back when the band were a local outfit operating as Bodega Bay, but something about where the breakthrough success of the past few years prompted a revisit.
“It’s like a prequel and a sequel to our other two records,” explains frontman Hozie, over Zoom from the home he shares with Belfiglio in Queens, New York. “It’s a sequel in the sense that it shows we’re moving in the direction of being more of a melodic band but prequel literally because most of the songs were written before those songs.”
