A so-called remake of their 2015 album of the same name, Our Brand Could Be Yr Life provides a scathing critique of consumerism to the backdrop of funky guitar and 80s synths. BODEGA’s newest album scales back the original 33 track, Garage Band made project released by BODEGA BAY (Ben Hozie and Nikki Belfiglio’s prior band) giving listeners 15 songs (including two brand-new tracks). The album title references Michael Azerrad’s book about the indie bands of the 1980s, using every opportunity available to make the album’s message absolute: everything you love has been taken over by corporations and is now ready to be sold back to you.
Often pushing the line between commentary and lecturing, the robotic voice that plays at the intro and outro of many of the songs rarely actually adds to the message, instead just spelling it out for the listener. When at the beginning of “Bodega Bait” we get asked “What is the difference between an artist and an advertiser?” or at the end of “Stain Gaze” when we’re told to “choose your favorite color. Curate your personal brand. The best personal brand has seamless flow with corporation brand,” the heavy handedness threatens to turn a worthy concept album into an eye-roll inducing and patronizing project, though it does ultimately avoid this fate.
That being said, Our Brand Could Be Yr Life manages to come out on the winning side in its battle between sanctimoniousness and meaningful, well produced art. Album highlight and lead single, “Tarkovski” pushes beyond its light indie-rock shell, using a guitar solo interlude and a contrasting, blunt semi-spoken bridge to add depth to a song that could have proved underwhelming in such a heavy album. Another standout comes a few songs later with “Webster Hall”, a deft mockery of the unaware, night-ruining dude that unfortunately seems to be at every NYC show.
“Protean” taps into a breezy indie rock sound that feels like it was pulled straight out of early 2000s California, without being stale. In some ways this ability to look back and to reference without repeating or replicating is the album’s greatest strength. Ironically, verse two of “Protean” has a guy realizing things will never work out with a girl because “she said there’s nothing ever new in the arts” and he believes “that thinking is lazy,” (a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with).
The album’s focal point is no doubtably the three part “Cultural Consumer” (although “Born Into by what Consumes” is arguably an introduction to this section). Each of the songs in the “Cultural Consumer” calls out insufferable consumers, who build their whole identity around the book they buy and band knowledge they mindlessly memorize. As is the case with the rest of the album, the humor of it all is what keeps the 8 plus minute critique of buying and selling culture from becoming a guitar-backed bore.
The album finishes strong with “City is Taken”, a catchy track with tight drums and a jazzy bass that tackles the band’s relationship to gentrification. Following the saga that is “Cultural Consumer”, “City is Taken” is able to give the album something fresh to finish on, with one of the most musically interesting songs on the project.
‘Our Brand Could Be Yr Life’ is out now via Chrysalis Records
