Bodega who are Ben Hozie (guitars, vocals), Nikki Belfiglio (keys, percussion, vocals), Dan Ryan (guitars), Adam See (bass) and Adam Shumski (drums) have announced a small number of May dates in the UK, including an appearance in Brighton at the ever popular Concorde 2 courtesy of JOY. promoters. Tickets for this concert are available right now and can be purchased from HERE and HERE.
They will also be playing ‘Wide Awake’ and ‘Bearded Theory’ festivals and the band will perform further headline dates in the UK this October. See tour dates below.
The live dates are on the back of their new 15 song ‘Our Brand Could Be Yr Life’ album which dropped on 12th April – Order yours HERE. The new album sees them carve a new future from fuzz-soaked, consumerism-skewering shards of their past. “It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for years,” guitarist and vocalist Ben Hozie explains of ‘Our Brand Could Be Yr Life’ – a collection of catchy indie-rock ruminations on the slow-creep of corporate-think into youth culture, first written eight years ago. Then known as Bodega Bay, the Brooklyn group recorded those songs as a paradoxical double album. “It was super meticulous but aggressively lo-fi at the same time,” Hozie laughs, recalling thirty three tracks they “treated like a lush Brian Wilson epic but recorded through a scrappy MacBook mic.” Pretty much no one heard the ensuing self-released album outside of Bushwick, he insists. But for Hozie and vocalist Nikki Belfiglio – Bodega’s other driving force – it retained a special place in their hearts, as more than just music. “It was a statement,” the guitarist beams. “Where the philosophy we loved and music we loved began to combine into one package,” Belfiglio adds.
Now, Bodega have reinterpreted ‘Our Brand Could Be Yr Life’ for 2024. “We thought of it like a director remaking one of their old films, like when Hitchcock remade the Man Who Knew Too Much, or when Yasujirō Ozu re-did The Story of Floating Weeds,” says Hozie, who it’s never a surprise to hear talking about music through a cinematic lens. After all, this is a creative who, in addition to his work in Bodega, moonlights as a celebrated indie filmmaker (PVT Chat, his 2020 drama about online sex work, won rave reviews). “When you’re older and better at your craft, you can revisit the same material but do different things with it.”
The guitarist isn’t kidding. On this rebooted ‘Our Brand’, singalongs of old are brought blazing into modern day with heavily reworked arrangements that underline how much their musicianship has grown. ‘Tarkovski’, for example, now features a face-melting solo from Ryan, as part of an extended jam section the band are calling “the closest we’ve come to working our live improvisations into a record so far.” ‘Set The Controls For The Heart of the Drum’, meanwhile – previously a ninety-second burst of electricity – is now longer, more pounding and funnier than before, with an absurd mid-song skit that speaks to the group’s subtle comic streak. Throw in new songs, like opener ‘Dedicated to the Dedicated’ and the album’s explosive finale ‘City is Taken’ – a song lit up by Shumski’s thundering drum fills – and you’re left with a thrilling time capsule of who Bodega were and who they’re soon to be. One that, by the way, was recorded using more than one MacBook microphone this time around. “I think it’s our best-sounding record to date,” says Hozie, who produced the album, with long-time collaborator Adam Sachs on engineering and mixing duties.
Bodega live dates:
May 2024
25th – London – Wide Awake Festival
26th – Walton-on-Trent – Bearded Theory Festival
27th – Manchester – New Century Hall
28th – Brighton – Concorde 2
October 2024
15th – Nottingham – Rescue Rooms
16th – Leeds – Brudenell Social Club
17th – Glasgow – Room 2
18th – Newcastle – The Cluny
19th – Birmingham – Future Days at The Crossing
21th – Cambridge – Junction 2
22nd – Sheffield – Crookes Social Club
23rd – Bristol – The Lantern
24th – London – EartH Hall
Visit the official BODEGA website HERE.
