BeatRoute Magazine BC Edition August 2018

MUSIC
HOT SNAKES
THRASHING AGAINST THE INEVITABLE MARCH OF TIME
EMILY CORLEY
The sound of Jericho Sirens rings loud and clear as Hot Snakes continue stoking the fire with their signature sound.
Hot Snakes’ first new studio album in 14 years was
always going to be a tumultuous piss-punk brawl,
but Jericho Sirens tempers the band’s trademark
raging strut with a brooding awareness of the
fragility of human existence. Lyrics such as “It’s all
been before // It’s getting late” on spiky opener “I
Need A Doctor” point to Rick Froberg’s sentiment
that the band’s latest tour is all about “trying to
maximize the time we still get to do this kind of
thing in our lives.” But there’s no bitterness here.
For Froberg and the rest of the band, this album
BODEGA
INSPIRING THOUGHT AND MOVEMENT ROOTED IN THE PRESENT
MIA GLANZ
“I am not a cinephile!” shouts Bodega
on the short but sweaty punk track
off their debut LP, Endless Scroll. Its
love-hate since both Nikki Belfiglio
and Ben Hozie, the front liners and
vocalists of Bodega, are actually
filmmakers. This paradox is not the
only conceptual mind-bend on the
album. Take the riff of their pop-rock
single, “How Did This Happen!?,” when
they proclaim “Everyone is equally a
master and a slave!”
It’s this combination of musical
spunk and thoughtfulness that
drives the band’s writing and sound.
There’s Belfiglio and Hozie, along with
guitarist Madison Velding VanDam,
drummer Montana Simone and
bassist Heather Elle. “The rule of
Bodega is whoever wrote the lyrics
sings it,” says Hozie. “A lot of our
songs are really short and that’s on
purpose. We want things to be razor
sharp and straight to the point.”
This process is important when
dealing with heavier questions. The
music of Bodega is wrapped up with
concerns about how to live ethically,
how to be sensitive and open-minded
in music and life. Ethics, for Hozie, in
encompasses something along the lines of an
acceptance of the inevitable march of time, coupled
with a refusal to let that get in the way: “We’re older,
time’s moved on, life is what it is.”
In homage to the unyielding grit of a legendary punk
partnership, that has endured, in some form since
1986, each short, sharp track on this latest album
sounds like a final blind stab into the darkness of a
threatened existence.
Froberg is cheerfully nonchalant about Hot Snakes
touring new material together again: “Whatever
the sense of Aristotle, questioning
constantly how to best live one’s life.
He likes to use “art rock” to
describe what Bodega is all about,
because the term allows for “rock and
roll music that has a conceptual side
to it, and a visual side to it and a more
thoughtful side to it.” Vague enough
to encompass Bodega’s energetic
punk tracks along with the sweeter,
slower songs that aren’t really punk
at all. For Hozie, ’70s Brit rock and
post-punk has been a huge influence
“because it was the moment when I
realized music could be as aggressive
and energetic as punk rock while
having an intellectual, conceptual side
to it.” If you listen closely, on Belfiglio’s
parts there’s a love of Madonna era
dance music that also influences their
sound.
“Our music could not have existed
in the early ’70s, 2000’s; it just would
not feel the same,” Hozie says.
Bodega is fully of now, there’s no
nostalgia, but rather awareness of
what’s come before. He explains, “We
try to write music that addresses
where bands exist in the world, on
social media and on the internet.” This
means they relate to the “feminine
aspects of where rock music is going”
being a majority female band as part
of the increasingly female indie scene.
Social media? It’s complicated. They
treat the phrases they type on Twitter
as if they were song lyrics, while
knowing how cheap those words then
become.
The band’s not only thoughtful.
Bodega gets off on performing.
They’re not one of those bands that
are going to sound the same every
time, or exactly like they do on the
album. Anything from a “mild,
meditative show” to “a train going off
the rails” can happen, depending on
the audience.
“Were kinda like a mirror. However
the audience is, we throw it back
at you,” says Hozie. “The goal is to
get people in their bodies, moving
around losing themselves in the
hypnosis of the beat.”
And that’s what you can expect
from Bodega, they get you thinking,
and moving too.
Bodega perform at the Fox Cabaret
(Vancouver) on August 14.
happens will happen along the way. I guess we’re
pretty used to it now. But we also don’t go out for
six months at a time like a lot of bands do. We
won’t do that. It’s just a trip. It’s not a vacation, but
it is fun. We don’t beat ourselves to death with it.”
After almost twenty years of touring together, and
incalculable combined experience of being on the
road with other bands, Hot Snakes have got this
lifestyle down to a fine art. “We never really stopped
touring together. We played sporadically – reunion
shows and this and that. So the whole thing is
really a lot like how it left off,” Froberg says. “We still
genuinely have a lot of fun playing together. When
a band is not having fun anymore, that’s when they
should stop. We all just like to hang out and we
party and have a good time.”
Watching Hot Snakes perform, this genuine
enthusiasm for playing together is obvious. Their live
set is a frenzy of raucous intensity with an edge of
antagonistic rage. For this latest record, their sound
seems to be a natural evolution of what Froberg
describes as their original ‘operating philosophy’ of
Hot Snakes, as compared to the refined complexity
of Reis and Froberg’s previous band, Drive Like Jehu:
“More simple. More concise. More direct.”
“The things that were different this time around
are just about the passage of time. The way people
change and what other people bring to it. We were
all in different bands in the interim between Hot
Snakes records, and we’ve added some things to
our tool bags that way. I absolutely think the other
bands we’ve played in have had an influence on this
new record. It’s just natural that they would.”
Interestingly, both original Hot Snakes drummer
Jason Koukournis and his replacement Mario
Rubalcaba play on the band’s latest release (and in
their live sets). Both are incredible drummers, each
bringing their own unique flavour to the songs they
play on. Froberg explains that the people in the
lineup are equally as important, if not more so, as
the music they play: “It’s a pretty self-contained unit.
It always pretty much has been. Everyone in the
band has their own roles. We break up the labour
that way.”
Jericho Sirens is Hot Snakes’ first release on Sub Pop,
a label that Froberg describes warmly as “the best
I’ve ever been on.” But Froberg confirms the band’s
DIY ethic is as strong as ever: “we still take care of
stuff ourselves”.
They may have years of punk success behind them,
but Hot Snakes are not a band who will ever court
mainstream validation.
Hot Snakes perform at the Biltmore Cabaret
(Vancouver) on August 10.
Bodega provide a modern day commentary with progressive views on their debut, Endless Scroll.
20
August 2018