Cheekface is an indie rock trio, more precisely a talk-singing band, from Los Angeles.
The story starts in 2017. Things were getting pretty crappy on Earth. Indie rock lifers Greg and Mandy got together to write out the anxiety, despair and the bleak humor of it all. They sent the demos to Echo and, voila, a band.
It wasn’t a project that started with much ambition: the idea was to drop a record on Bandcamp and call it a day. But in 2018, the band’s second single “Dry Heat/Nice Town,” a playful pub rock tune about leftist protest culture, started to snowball online. A word-of-mouth cult started to form, and it intensified with Cheekface’s community-minded singalong shows. Fans dubbed themselves “Cheek Freaks.”
The band chased their 2019 debut LP “Therapy Island” with 2021’s “Emphatically No,” which bowed as Bandcamp’s top selling alternative album. Their 3rd LP “Too Much to Ask” in 2022 was a watershed moment: it shot to #2 on the non-commercial radio chart, and The Needle Drop proclaimed it one of the year’s best albums. Cheekface’s 4th album “It’s Sorted” came out January 22, 2024. Touring to support “It’s Sorted,” the band sold out shows across the US, Canada and the UK.
Bodega
The follow-up to the band’s acclaimed debut album, Endless Scroll (2018), and 2019’s Shiny New Model EP, Broken Equipment was inspired by a book club. In the early months of 2020, the Brooklyn art-punk incendiaries gathered together with close friends to study the works of a wide range of philosophers. Passionate debates lasting long into the night became a regular occurrence, motivating the band to become as ideologically unified as the weighty tomes they were reading. Broken Equipment is BODEGA’s attempt to interrogate the external factors that make them who they are, propelling existential quandaries with tongue-in-cheek humour, highly personal lyrics, and irresistible grooves.
Since BODEGA’s formation in 2016, Ben and Nikki (who previously played together in the band BODEGA BAY) have experienced a rare meteoric rise. The duo double as filmmakers, earning acclaim for their 2020 erotic drama PVT Chat starring Peter Vack, Julia Fox, and other recognizable faces from the Safdie Brothers’ cinematic universe. When the pandemic forced them to hit pause, they used the opportunity to regroup with drummer/performance artist Tai Lee, bassist/philosophy professor Adam See, and lead guitarist Dan Ryan. Broken Equipment was produced by Ben himself with Bobby Lewis, BODEGA’s NYC live sound mixer. The record was mixed by Bryce Goggin, whom the band sought out for his work with Pavement, and Adam Sachs (WIVES).
The album’s 12 songs are set in present day New York City, packing in references to contemporary issues of algorithmic targeting, media gentrification, and the band itself. On ‘NYC (disambiguation)’, they break down how the Big Apple was “founded by a corporation” and history remains alive in the present. The poetic ‘Pillar on the Bridge of You’ is the first love song Ben ever wrote for Nikki, while ‘All Past Lovers’ gazes back to the “southern belle” and “chat room suitor” who still live inside him today.
To accompany the propulsive pace of ‘Statuette on the Console’ and its lyrics about switching perspectives, Nikki recorded alternate versions in eight different languages. “I used God in that song as this arch overlord character, but it could also be a real estate developer,” she explains. “It’s about anyone who puts their reality on your back and forces you to carry it around.” In that song, Nikki also wryly states that although she doesn’t have faith in this particular “God,” she is still “living life with (my) platitudes.” On ‘Territorial Call of the Female’, Nikki playfully quips that “when the man is around that’s when I’m putting you down,” highlighting how in the past she unknowingly reinforced patriarchal values by turning against other women to attract men. It’s moments like these where BODEGA most exemplifies their self-professed motto that “the best critique is self critique.”
