Track 37: Tarkovski - Bodega

Bodega’s new album Our Brand Could Be Yr Life is a remake of earlier songs from an earlier iteration of the band (Bodega Bay), packaged together into a concept album about money influencing indie scenes, and it’s pretty gosh darn great and one of my favorite albums of the year. Lead single Tarkovski is catchy psych-punk art rock with a killer guitar solo. But it’s also chock full of big ideas about how to make good art.

Bodega singer / songwriter Ben Hozie is also a filmmaker, so it’s no surprise that he’s name-checking one of the greatest to ever do it.

Andrei Tarkovsky : Cinema is an unhappy art because it depends on money. Not only because a film is very expensive; but it is then also marketed like cigarettes. A film is good if it sells well, but if cinema is art then such an approach is absurd - it'd mean that art is good only if it sells well.

Another song off the album (Bodega Bait) kicks off with the question, “What is the difference between an artist and an advertiser?”

One of the things I hate doing the most is promoting my work. I spent so much time dedicating my life to my fiction podcast because I was concerned that my friends and I would put so much effort into something that nobody would read. We built up a fairly good following on Twitter only to watch it become a refuse for corporate fascists and neo-Nazis.

Even on Substack, I get exhausted having to “put myself out there.” It’s an underappreciated skill, and certainly time consuming, and if it amounts to good people leaving a platform in droves while the worst of humanity stays, what’s the point?

But this is the reality. To support the fourth season of our show, I messaged every single one of my Facebook “friends” and asked them to support our Indiegogo. We hit our goals, but at what cost? lol.

I’m now trying to do stuff that’s uniquely me and not worry about the audience, not worry about what “sells.” But if it doesn’t sell, will anyone listen to it? I hate having to constantly think of angles, but this is 2024 and there’s a lot of noise to cut through. And with everyone salivating over the “endless possibilities” of a race to mediocre product AI can produce, does anyone really even care about art anymore? Did they ever really care?

Of course they do. I’m here after all, and there’s hundreds of music writers on Substack alone. So, perspective. Just subscribe to my page, okay? I need all the followers I can get.

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