Bodega have announced their third album, Our Brand Could Be Yr Life, which will be out April 12 via Chrysalis Records. It’s their first release for the label, which is also currently home to Laura Marling and Marika Hackman (and used to be home to The Specials, Sinéad O’Connor, Jethro Tull and more).
If that title seems familiar — beyond its hat tipping/tweaking of Michael Azerrad’s punk tome — it’s because it was also the name of their 2015 album when they were called Bodega Bay. They’ve now re-recorded some of those songs, which were originally done on Garageband, with bigger production and higher fidelity and added a few new ones as well. “It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for years,” says singer-guitarist Ben Hozie. “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… When you’re older and better at your craft, you can revisit the same material but do different things with it.”
Hozie, who co-produced the album with frequent collaborator Adam Sachs, says the themes of the album have only gotten more relevant. “The idea of the corporatisation of guitar music has only been exacerbated,” Hozie notes. “The big philosophical question that I end up asking myself is: has it always been this way? Was rock always superficial, but I was just too young and naive to understand? If you look back to 1957 rock music, it had this incredible surge of electricity to it. Chuck Berry really was an underrated poet. I’m not denigrating the original rock’n’roll at all, which I still love and cherish. But it was superficial by design. It was meant to be like a quick product that you could market to teenagers and then toss aside.”
The first single from the album is “Tarkovsky,” which sounds completely different than Bodega Bay’s version, and you can watch the video for that below.
Bodega will be on the road this spring, playing SXSW in March, and shows across North American in April and May. They’ve also got a NYC show this week at TV Eye on Wednesday (1/10) with Big Bliss also on the bill. All dates are listed below.
BODEGA – 2024 TOUR DATES
01/10 – Ridgewood, NY @ TV Eye
03/12-16 – Austin TX @ SXSW
04/19 – Boston, MA @ Rockwell
04/20 – Montreal, PQ @ Bar le Ritz
04/21 – Toronto, ON @ The Garrison
04/22 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Tavern
04/23 – Chicago, IL @ Schuba’s
04/25 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Club Café
04/27 – Washington, DC @ Comet Ping Pong
04/30 – Savannah, GA @ El Rocko
05/01 – Tampa, FL @ Hooch & Hive
05/02 – Miami, FL @ Gramps
05/03 – Jacksonville, FL @ The Walrus
05/04 – Charlotte, NC @ Snug Harbor
05/24 – Madrid, ES @ Tomavistas Festival
05/25 – London, UK @ Wide Awake Festival