Release Date: Jul 6, 2018
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Indie Rock, New Wave/Post-Punk Revival, International
Record label: What's Yr Rupture?
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With a happily scrappy sound, a snarky attitude, and hooks for days, Bodega make a case for themselves as the best band in Brooklyn (and other places) with their debut album, Endless Scroll. The album is produced by Austin Brown on the same tape machine Parquet Courts used to record Light Up Gold, and that's a good starting point for reference. Though the two bands share an angularity and sideways way of writing pop songs, Bodega are less Pavement and more New Young Pony Club, less the Fall and more Delta 5.
BY JENNIFER KELLY Bodega makes smart, rattling tight post-punk rackets out of scrambling guitars, a crazy bounce of bass and drums and pop culture fragments strung together in rhythmic sprays. The Brooklyn six-piece takes its cue from singer/guitar slasher Ben Hozie, who swears he's not a cinephile ("motherfucker!") but nonetheless chants at length about "Jack in Titanic" and maintains an IMDB page. Nikki Belfiglio is a worthy abettor, echoing fragments of deadpan rants, interjecting Delta 5-ish "huhs!" and "hahs!" and taking a Pylon-ish lead on "Gyrate," a song about female pleasure with its own Harry-Met-Sally interlude.
As is the norm for warm-up bands, audience expectations were low for the relatively unknown Brooklyn band Bodega as they opened for Franz Ferdinand on a leg of their current tour. But eyes and ears perked up instantly on the first note played because Bodega is neither your average warm-up band nor your average post-punk band. In fact is difficult to pigeonhole them as post-punk and average they are not.
After winning over crowds at SXSW and the Great Escape, art punks Bodega come out with all guns blazing on their debut. With most of its members drawn from the city's film and art spheres, much of 'Endless Scroll' is rooted in New York. Sometimes recalling Frank O'Hara's 'I do this, I do that' poems at their most irreverent, Bodega's lyrics are at once more socially engaged; on 'Can't Knock The Hustle' they don't just drink smoothies, they remark on how absurd it is that such a fruity concoction costs nine dollars.
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