Growing up and getting old is a lot like wandering through a labyrinth. Shifts in surroundings can be disorienting, and change can cause a crisis of faith. It can make you question everything.
Having dropped their debut record and toured the world for nearly two years, Bodega’s Ben Hozie struggled to come to terms with being stuck in his room when Covid-19 came calling.
“I was going through this crisis, an inquiry into my own identity,” Ben muses from his apartment in Queens, joined at the hip by his partner and bandmate Nikki Belfiglio.
“I assume this is a universal experience, but I turned 30 and wanted to understand, who am I? What are my values? What thoughts are my own? Which can I trust? Which thoughts do I want to get rid of? Which do I want to refine?”
Ben’s identity crisis could’ve come at a cost to his creativity. Instead, he knuckled down deep and made an erotic drama, PVT Chat, released in 2020. But Bodega didn’t fall by the wayside while he played director; rather, the group got together as a book club, bonding over classic philosophy.
“We were reading philosophy purely for pleasure, but to me, there was an element of self-examination. Some of the big themes of philosophy, like how to live an ethical life and what is your identity, are all purely intellectual exercises when you’re 18, in a way that they’re not when you’re 30 – they become really serious questions, like, what is death?”
Diving off the deep end directly into a pool of existentialism is a heavy burden to bear. Rather than keep it between the book club, Ben began working on Bodega’s ‘difficult second album’ – ‘Broken Equipment’.
“I think there’s a concept to the album; it’s this identity quest of sorts. Thrown is the ‘Sergeant Pepper’s’ thesis track, where I’m putting forward all these contradicting qualities within myself, and the rest of the record is exploring that through various means. I’m examining external things like the history of New York City or movie trailers. but using it as a way of understanding the self through other things.”
As a band influenced as much by books as they are anything else, ‘Broken Equipment’ is a journey through the human psyche – as if you were living life on the streets of New York City. It’s like immersing yourself in your very own novella. But it asks more questions than it ever answers, inspired in many ways by an essay that sparked its title – The Origin of the Work of Art by Martin Heidegger.
“Heidegger is talking about how a really great work of art functions like equipment when it’s broken down,” Ben explains, his face lighting up at the opportunity to dive into philosophy. “He talks about how having all this equipment ready at hand, you take it for granted. Like, I might use this bass guitar every day, but if I break a string, or the pickups act wonky, or my headphones break, suddenly I’m aware of my reliance, and it’s only when things break down that we notice them.
“For us, I think it rings true because artists tend to be damaged souls, and because of our damaged nature, we’re extra sensitive to the world, so we ourselves are broken equipment that can reveal things in a way only poetry can. It reminds me of Bob Dylan’s ‘Blonde on Blonde’; who knows what the hell that means?”
‘Broken Equipment’ isn’t just Ben’s sandbox to play in. Everyone in the band has bought their own philosophical quests into the mix to build a sandcastle of identity exploration. In many ways, it adds a political tinge to things.
“‘Broken Equipment’ can be things breaking down – right now, conversation feels really broken down,” Nikki perks up, hugging their cat, comfortable letting Ben take the lead. “On ‘Statuette on the Console’, I sang it in 8 different languages, so it’s like if English itself is breaking down, and that’s the universal language. How do we circumvent that? Because we think we’re at the centre of the universe, and that thinking is causing a lot of distress.”
“It’s almost like the whole world has had to come to terms with this brokenness. I mean, I’m sure people in the 1930s would’ve said ‘we knew our world was broken’, but I don’t know if everybody did in quite the same way that we do now,” counters Ben, a constant back and forth between the two, who often come off like they’re talking through telekinesis. “Every generation tends to think it’s the most important one witnessing an apocalyptic shift, but now genuinely feels like a broken time.”
It’s this way of thinking that separates them from the crowd. Lumped in as part of the overcrowded post-punk parade, Bodega stand outside looking in as outliers of the scene. Musically, they owe as much to The Strokes and Bob Dylan as they do The Fall and Talking Heads. Lyrically, they swerve the overt politicism of British bands like Idles and Yard Act. It’s a bit of a bugbear they battle with.
“I think that’s the one thing that separates us from certain other groups now. You know, those ones always in social critique mode, where it’s like ‘this is the problem, these are the bad guys, and we are in solidarity against them’? There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, but our music tends to be that when I’m digging into an idea or a person, I’m really talking to myself.
“Like, instead of criticising people on the right to me – which is low hanging fruit, it’s too easy – I’d rather criticise the complacency of people just like myself. Now that, that’s a far harder and more nuanced idea.”
‘Broken Equipment’ isn’t an album built solely on its philosophies, though. And their battle to beat out the post-Brexit and post-Trump new wave of post-punk thrives on it. They’re using it to their advantage, but they’re not attached to it.
“We use the language of post-punk to slip under the radar. I love post-punk music, but it’s pretty easy to see its shortcomings. When I hear a new post-punk band, I already know what they’re doing – like okay, you heard Talking Heads and The Fall, and you synthesise it well, but I’m pretty bored by track three.
“Any good band, in my opinion, becomes an island unto themselves; they establish their own world through stealing from a lot of different genres. It was never our ambition just to be a post-punk band; we want to be a rock and roll group that does a lot of different things.”
The songs that occupy ‘Broken Equipment’ were chosen with that in mind. If a song felt like they were playing it safe, or sounded like the one before it, it got scrapped. In many ways, it’s a playlist of guilty pleasures and musical loves inspired by their inability to listen to one thing at a time. It’s a hill Ben and Nikki are willing to die on.
“I’m a White Album person; that’s why I like James Joyce. I like people that throw everything at the wall, see what sticks, and if some of it doesn’t, whatever, it’s still a genuine expression of that person. Most sophisticated music fans, or even unsophisticated fans, have ears that crave different tones. I feel like the human personality is so complex, you know, that’s why I’ve never understood people who only listen to this kind of metal music – I don’t buy that.”
Bodega are a band you can question at every juncture because they’re questioning you too. They’re not afraid to ask questions of your beliefs, to examine the world in kaleidoscope rather than black and white. By doing so, they reveal the avant-garde, off-the-cusp influences that slip into ‘Broken Equipment’.
“I don’t know how you feel about this, but over quarantine, I was investigating the music of my youth, and I realised I still really love Korn and Slipknot. It really influenced the record, like ‘Doers’ is our way of doing a nu-metal song, but through a Bodega lens. It’s not particularly heavy, but it has a turntable element, and the distorted guitars, and it’s goofy in the way that nu-metal is playful.”
In fact, you shouldn’t be all surprised if the nuances of nu-metal bleed into the future of Bodega. Because it covers all the bases of their band’s stance on being creatives. And apparently, it’s all down to seeing Slipknot as a modern interpretation of, uhm, opera.
“As a maggot, I saw Slipknot for the first time this summer, and it was amazing. That aesthetic presentation is like Wagner; it’s a heavy metal opera,” he enthuses, laughing as much as he’s serious. “I think nu-metal is exciting because it’s ungentrified, you know? Like I hear bands now, and they’re like ‘oh, we’re influenced by The Strokes’ and that’s pretty gentrified territory, you know your main audience are people that read New York Times and The Guardian. With nu-metal, it’s like a no man’s land free for all, like who can listen to that?”
No matter what genres they’re chopping and changing, Bodega buried themselves in ‘Broken Equipment’. Whether they’ve cured their identity crisis or added further fuel to its fire is still to be seen, but nonetheless, they’re proud of the product they’re carving.
“One of the goals for us was to still sound tough, but sunnier at the same time. We wanted to channel pop in the true sense of what people think pop music is, but we also want this record to be one you can put on before you’re going out at night; you’re having a drink and dancing around your apartment, and I feel like it does that, don’t you?”
Taken from the April issue of Upset. Bodega’s album ‘Broken Equipment’ is out now.
