Brooklyn band BODEGA shares the new single/video, “The Art of Advertising,” from Xtra Equipment, out today, July 15th, on What’s Your Rupture?. Xtra Equipment boasts eight new bonus tracks from the Broken Equipment sessions, and comes ahead of the band’s summer North American headline tour beginning next week. Much like the songs on Broken Equipment, BODEGA made these tracks extra breezy and hooky as well as more philosophically ambitious than their previous recordings. “Even when in the mode of social critique, I personally tend to think of my songwriting as more literary than analytic but here, the ‘The Art of Advertising’ and ‘Art and Advertising’ diptych functions as a sort of pop rock treatise on the subtle but crucial distinction between art and advertising (’Art creates cosmos’ whereas advertising ‘surface(s) status quo’),” says BODEGA’s Ben Hozie.
For the accompanying video, the band found inspiration from Godard, who, in the 80’s, said he’d fall asleep at the cinema during pre-film and trailer advertisements, later wake up and not be able to tell whether he was watching the feature film or the advertisements. Ben elaborates: “Today you can thumb through any magazine and find it hard to tell what is an ad and what is an article. All music videos (even the extraordinary ones) are essentially advertisements for their respective songs. Here, me and Nikki [Belfiglio] adopted the lyric video genre to playfully illustrate the various ways advertising is always (for better and worse) present in our apartment (and in BODEGA). Dissolves between shots in movies typically signify that time has passed but with screens and advertisements ever-present in our lives, our minds are
always experiencing time in hazy ways.”
Watch/Stream “The Art of Advertising”
In some ways every recording on Xtra Equipment is a response to an earlier record; both records were written to expand upon BODEGA’s previous strengths as well as explore terrain outside of the post-punk milieu they found themselves painting in previously. The synth and drum machine led “Post yr Kilimanjaro” is a recent reworking of nu wave jammer “Doers.” BODEGA also recorded two covers very different in timbre from their original source(s): Fugazi’s “Provisional” was originally recorded for a Ripcord Records comp to raise funds for an animal shelter in Scotland. Stretch Arm Strong’s “For the Record” is a loving homage to one of the most important band’s in Ben’s life, who spent most of his youth in Columbia, South Carolina (where Stretch are from). “Everybody’s Sad” (the “Thrown” b-side) highlights and bemoans the connection between the current pop obsession with individuality and the aesthetics of melancholy (“everybody’s sad at the top of the billboard”). “Top Hat No Rabbit” (the “Doers” b-side) was written coming down from a Ulysses induced high, and is a flurry of thoughts attempting to reconcile free will (necessary for any change) with a deep-seated belief (and BODEGA obsession) that all thought is determined (or “thrown”) by external and/or physical stimuli. Conversely, Ben wrote the opening ballad “Memorize w/ yr Heart” (previously only available as a bonus track on the Broken Equipment CD) as a reminder to not get stuck on abstract mind games. Most of all philosophy should be done with the body (or at least with a steady backbeat).
Stream/Purchase Xtra Equipment
Xtra Equipment tracklist:
1.Thrown
2. Doers
3. Territorial Call of the Female
4. NYC(disambiguation)
5. Statuette on the Console
6. C.I.R.P.
7. Pillar on the Bridge of You
8. How Can I Help Ya?
9. No Blade of Grass
10. All Past Lovers
11. Seneca The Stoic
12. After Jane
///
13. Memorize w/ yr Heart
14. The Art of Advertising
15. Art and Advertising
16. Post yr Kilimanjaro (Doers 2.0)
17. Top Hat No Rabbit
18. Everybody’s Sad
19. For The Record (Stretch Arm Strong cover)
20. Provisional (Fugazi cover)
BODEGA Tour Dates:
Friday, July 29 – Houston, TX @ Wonky Power
Saturday, July 30 – Austin, TX @ Antone’s
Monday, August 1 – El Paso, TX @ Lowbrow Palace
Tuesday, August 2 – Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress
Wednesday, August 3 – Phoenix, AZ @ Trunk Space
Thursday, August 4 – San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar
Friday, August 5 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
Saturday, August 6 – San Francisco, CA @ Cafe Du Nord
Monday, August 8 – Portland, OR @ Holocene
Tuesday, August 9 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore
Wednesday, August 10 – Seattle, WA @ Vera Project
Friday, August 12 – Boise, ID @ The Shredder
Sunday, August 14 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court
Monday, August 15 – Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
Wednesday, August 17 – Omaha, NE @ Reverb Lounge
Thursday, August 18 – Minneapolis, MN @ Turf Club
Friday, August 19 – Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club
Saturday, August 20 – Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village
Sunday, August 21 – Cleveland, OH @ Mahall’s
Tuesday, August 23 – Toronto, ON @ The Garrison
Wednesday, August 24 – Montreal, QB @ Bar Le Ritz
Thursday, August 25 – Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground
Friday, August 26 – Boston, MA @ Crystal Ballroom
Saturday, August 27 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Made
Keep your mind open.
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[Thanks to Patrick at Pitch Perfect PR.]