David Bazan - Curse Your Branches

Musicians who sing about their faith often are polarizing, and David Bazan is no exception. Bazan is best-known for his work with former band Pedro the Lion, which specialized in slowcore confessionals with doleful vocals. In the past, some listeners gave his lyrics a cursory glance and snidely wrote him off as just another underperforming, devout evangelical. Meanwhile, many evangelicals bristled at Bazan’s constant, not-so-subtle skewering of their culture. And his drinking.

Bazan’s struggles with faith have been a consistent theme in his work—one minute he’s singing God’s praises, the next minute he’s doubting God altogether. Until recently, though, faith has always trumped. “I could tell you why I doubt it, and why I still believe,” he sang on “The Fleecing” from 2004’s Achilles Heel.

But doubt is back with a vengeance on Curse Your Branches, so much so that Bazan has surrendered to it. Struggle has turned into defiance, belief to disbelief. “You expect me to believe/That all this misbehaving grew from one enchanted tree?” he asks on album opener “Hard to Be.” And later, on the title track, he digs his heels in harder: “All fallen leaves should curse their branches/For not letting them decide where they should fall/And not letting them refuse to fall at all.” Of all the Big Questions, the one that seems to rankle him the most is: If God is good, then why is there evil in the world? “If you knew what would happen,” Bazan sings on “When We Fell,” “and made us just the same/Then you, my Lord, can take the blame.”

In Pedro the Lion, many of Bazan’s first-person narratives weren’t (entirely) self-referential; Control (2002) was a concept album that chronicled the destruction of a fictitious marriage. But that’s not what Bazan is doing here, and the record is better for it.

And while Bazan’s voice will always be ponderous no matter the instrumentation, this new music is less sludgy. If Pedro the Lion albums were dark basement rooms, Curse Your Branches is renovated with some windows that, from time to time, even let in soft breezes, usually in the form of longtime collaborator Casey Foubert’s pedal steel or little bits of keyboard, like the synthesized strings on “Heavy Breath.” The bluesy bounce of “When We Fell” also finds Bazan at his jauntiest, but he still loves taking things at a snail’s pace (“Harmless Sparks,” “In Stitches”).

There’s nothing breezy about Bazan’s state of mind, though. He hit a crossroads and made a decision, yet he’s anything but at peace with it. There are the possible cosmic implications, but even more so, Curse Your Branches is about the effect his decision (and his drinking habit, which is indicative of that decision) has on the people around him, particularly his family. “The gap between what I hoped would be/And what is/Makes me weep for my kids,” Bazan sings on “Bearing Witness.” He also fears that his doubt will “spread like original sin,” and wonders whether his baby daughter will “soon despise the smell of the booze on my breath like her mom.”

The most heartbreaking family portrait comes on “Please Baby Please,” a phrase that describes the look in his wife’s eyes, and then is pleaded by Bazan over the phone to his silent spouse. On the last verse, his daughter (in the future) enters the grim picture: “Sunrise at the county lockup/Now our baby’s 23/She was out late drinking/Killed a mother of three/She said please daddy please.”

Bazan’s spiritual journey is far from over. On the final track he admits he still hears the voice of the “captain,” and that his daughter is lately full of Big Questions, too. So there’s more to come. But for now, this crisis of faith has led him to create the best album of his career.

mp3: David Bazan - Bless This Mess

(Also at The Other Paper)

David Bazan

When clicking through my iPod, I routinely scroll right past artists that I genuinely enjoy, but for some reason the name just doesn't stick out anymore. I don't know if this is just the nature of having a chock-full iPod, because I probably used to do the same thing when scanning through stacks of CDs, but every so often I'm reminded of a band that I stopped listening to for no good reason. (Well, other than constantly having to listen to and review other albums and shows.)

I've been reading Body Piercing Saved My Life by Andrew Beaujon, a longtime Spin contributor, and it's a fascinating look at Christian rock and bands who play rock music and also happen to be Christians. Beaujon makes it clear he's not a Bible believer himself, which makes the book more intriguing to me. Anyhow, one of the best chapters so far is Beaujon's interview with David Bazan, formerly of Pedro the Lion (and electronic side project, Headphones).

Bazan's an opinionated, conflicted and endlessly interesting artist to me. He allows a time for questions at each of his shows, and someone inevitably asks him if he's a Christian, which he always responds to in the negative. Why? Beaujon quotes Bazan as saying, "I'm not equating myself with Martin Luther by any stretch--but him and people that were part of his movements just stopped calling themselves 'Catholics.' I'd rather there just be a misunderstanding--'The guy's flipped out and totally abandoned his faith'--because it's not necessary for strangers to know exactly how I feel."

Fortunately for us, that inner struggle makes for great songs. For a sampling, head here to download a solo set Bazan played back in November. I'll be listening to it, as well as rediscovering the tunes my iPod has been hiding from me right in front of my eyes.

And for some lyrics to squirm by, here's "Discretion" from Achilles Heel (whenever I hear this song now, I picture Chigurh, the killer from No Country For Old Men):

Having no idea that his youngest son was dead,
The farmer and his sweet young wife slept soundly in his bed.
In the shadow of the mountain, as the cattle hung their heads.

Grazing only feet from where the broken body lay.
It would lay undiscovered for another several days,
When the farmer would find vultures at their banquet in the hay.

The killer traveled eastbound in a golden brown sedan,
Weighing his most recent deviation from the plan.
Counting down the hours till the sun came up again.

Hired to hit the farmer, but the farmer's asshole son
Had not yet decided between poison or a gun.
Suddenly he realized he would not use either one.