ALL INSIDE AQUARIUM

NYC strikes again! Just over three weeks after a passionately electrifying and deliciously intimate gig at the Pop Up du Label in Paris, Brooklyn quintet BODEGA are releasing their fourth studio album on Chrysalis Records, on October 9th to be precise.

Following Rot in Helvetica, released in 2025 under the name NODEGA, the band’s hardcore Mr. Hyde, All Inside Aquarium marks a genuine turning point for a band whose name pays tribute to the film The Birds (1963), set in the fictional town of Bodega Bay. Or is it a nod to New York’s bodegas, i.e. corner stores?

Anyway, “We decided to make proper rock without the ‘indie’ modifier and do things that are out of vogue in the current landscape, such as coupling open-hearted lyrics with technical guitar solos,” they say. “The first rock music I really fell in love with was ’90s alternative rock,” adds frontman, vocalist and guitarist Ben Hozie. Are they setting aside their post-punk art-rock, in service of an equally punchy social critique, for more psychological writing and a return to their first musical loves? Hmm… we’re all ears!

The album was recorded in a disused church in Leeds, UK, under producer Matt Peel (Yard Act, W H Lung, Kaiser Chiefs…) and mixed in Brighton by Theo Verney (English Teacher, Lime Garden, Deadletter…). Unlike its predecessors, this fourth outing was thus recorded somewhere other than New York: a step back to climb out of a fishbowl where the air is running thin?

We kick off with the title track, “All Inside Aquarium,” a fittingly existential anthem whose metaphor evokes the feeling of being shut in and the resilience needed to regain a constructive lucidity in the face of the trials of our time, driven by a tense bass-and-drums rhythm section but with guitars more fluid and enveloping than usual. The track keeps the signature vocal back-and-forth of Ben Hozie and Nikki Belfiglio while setting up a hypnotic atmosphere conducive to incisive introspection. We’re savoring this new aquatic, psychedelic-leaning texture!

Next comes “Weather Me,” with Nikki back on lead vocals and plenty of attitude, an energetic track whose opening recalls the urgency and nervous tension of their early days before quickly drifting away from the post-punk sound to showcase warm guitars and an earworm of a chorus steeped in 1990s alternative rock. The stylistic pivot has been made.

“Literary World” is the most didactic track on the album: “It’s a pretty upbeat song, but it’s really about the fact that what we’re missing isn’t political awareness… but literary or poetic awareness,” Ben shares. The hybrid rhythm with its drum samples, the clean, shimmering guitars and the melodic, airy sound of this manifesto of a track fervently light up the band’s open stand for the dignity and freedom of thought of artists in general. The band has lost none of its verve or its sharp eye on society.

The second single, released in June, “Pick Up the Check,” keeps the band’s trademark sarcasm to call for breaking out of the mental straitjackets imposed by society, over a tense, direct alternative rock soaked in the swagger of the English scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The album’s fifth track is the pure embodiment of a band that has turned its raw rage into formidable rock efficiency.

One last spotlight on the “fake” cover of Bob Dylan’s “Slow Train,” whose lyrics BODEGA borrows for their very current political and social resonance while entirely rewriting the instrumental composition. The 1979 mid-tempo blues gives way to a brisk alternative rock with saturated guitars, which started out as a technical crash test to gauge how this new rock aesthetic sounded in Matt Peel’s studio. The test won unanimous approval: it’s a keeper!

In short, All Inside Aquarium testifies to a successful transformation: the band has managed to shed the angular stiffness of New York post-punk and embrace a more melodic alternative rock sound, without losing its deeply punk songwriting identity.

Big up, BODEGA!