Bodega - All Inside Aquarium (2026) [Hi-Res]

The New York band Bodega, founded about ten years ago by vocalists Ben Hozie and Nikki Belfiglio, has always resisted labels. Its debut Endless Scroll (2018), produced by Austin Brown of Parquet Courts, was chattering post-punk in the vein of that band and Wire. Our Brand Could Be Yr Life (2024) reworked early material in a new wave key, with Hozie citing Godard and Joyce as his main influences. In 2025, under the name Nodega, the band released Rot in Helvetica, eight skate thrash songs in 18 minutes.

The fifth album is conceived as a return to "proper rock": Hozie calls it a love letter to the taste of his 15-year-old self, a teenager miming Dave Navarro's solos from Jane's Addiction's Ritual De Lo Habitual. The title track gallops in with a syncopated riff echoing "Been Caught Stealing"; there is also a Jane's-style cover of Bob Dylan's "Slow Train" (1979, his evangelical period), turned into a hypnotic swirl akin to the Madchester scene and The Stone Roses, the record's other major inspiration. That thread runs through "Combustible," "Astro Night Ride" (with a shoegaze break) and "Literary World"; "Pick Up the Check," a song about cutting off unfulfilling relationships, recalls Second Coming with its murky guitar and dense drums.

Belfiglio's songs — "Weather Me," "Pile Driver" (Peaches-like), the sultry "Oxygen" — are charming but sit closer to Endless Scroll and Broken Equipment (2022) than to the new sound. Her droning ballad "Olivia," about a friend's death, hints at the band's potential for an Americana record, so the Dylan influence turns out not to be such a curveball.

Tracklist:
1. Bodega - All Inside Aquarium
2. Bodega - Weather Me
3. Bodega - Literary World
4. Bodega - Astro Night Ride
5. Bodega - Pick up the Check
6. Bodega - Oxygen
7. Bodega - Fear not the Fear
8. Bodega - Slow Train
9. Bodega - Combustible
10. Bodega - Pile Driver
11. Bodega - Backbeaten
12. Bodega - Olivia