Plumbiferous Media

David Bazan, front­man of the now-dissolved indie group Pedro the Lion, is now work­ing as a solo artist fol­low­ing both that group and his sec­ond, short-lived group Head­phones. His first full-length album as a solo artist, Curse Your Branches, is a gen­er­ally suc­cess­ful com­bi­na­tion of Bazan’s expe­ri­ence with each of his ear­lier groups as well as his own creativity.

On Curse Your Branches, Bazan has expertly mixed elec­tronic and acoustic instru­ments, start­ing on the first track, “Hard to Be,” which imme­di­ately pairs up nearly form­less synth with well defined piano chords. And not only are instru­ments mixed with each other well, but instru­ments are also given their place to show them­selves clearly, includ­ing the per­cus­sive intro which tran­si­tions clev­erly into the first main sec­tion of “When We Fell.” The bass also gets an espe­cially large space in which to show itself: the entirety of “Heavy Breath,” in which the bass acts, often alone, to keep the entire track engaging.

David Bazan’s voice works beau­ti­fully with the sub­tle instru­men­tals on Curse Your Branches, cre­at­ing a rolling sound, the basis for the sto­ry­telling aes­thetic of the album which Bazan has so obvi­ously mas­tered. An impres­sive grasp of pitch and a vari­ety of vocal styles adds to this effect, giv­ing fur­ther detail to both Bazan’s voice and the album as a whole. Thanks to this, his voice never falls into repet­i­tive pat­terns and is instead imbued with a vari­abil­ity which allows it to flow both above and among the music to cre­ate the immer­sive expe­ri­ence of Curse Your Branches.

Bazan has per­fectly tai­lored the lyrics of Curse Your Branches to fit with his vocal style, cre­at­ing tale-filled lines which, along with Bazan’s con­sid­er­a­tion of reli­gion, give the album an impres­sive degree of mean­ing. At the open­ing of the album, on “Hard to Be,” a retelling of the Bib­li­cal story of Adam and Eve, Bazan sings “And help­less to fight it / We should all be sat­is­fied / With this mag­i­cal expla­na­tion / For why the liv­ing die,” in a tongue-in-cheek “accep­tance” of the story. As Bazan’s reli­gious views have shifted over his career, so has the way he’s dealt with reli­gion - and the reflec­tion on Curse Your Branches is among Bazan’s most inter­est­ing. But reli­gion doesn’t occupy the entirety of Curse Your Branches. Bazan hasn’t aban­doned the often morose but always well-written anec­dotes from his ear­lier work, cul­mi­nat­ing in “In Stitches,” which includes the beau­ti­fully image-filled “My body bangs and twitches / Ill-sprung liquor wets my tongue / My fin­gers find the stitches / Firmly back and forth they run.”

But while Bazan does cre­ate indi­vid­ual, extremely strong ele­ments such as vocals, instru­men­tals, and lyrics, he most excels at com­bin­ing ele­ments per­fectly. “Bless This Mess” is a per­fect exam­ple; it uses what actu­ally amounts to rather dense lay­er­ing, and yet it still man­ages to sound light enough to remain eas­ily acces­si­ble. “Bear­ing Witness“‘s beau­ti­fully coun­ter­pun­tal and har­mo­niz­ing gui­tar and bass lines also clearly exem­plify Bazan’s skill.

Curse Your Branches has very few weak sec­tions. A small col­lec­tion of tracks are slightly over-repetitive or lengthy, but every other track ranges from “quite good” to “excel­lent,” and most fall closer to the lat­ter. Through­out Curse Your Branches, Bazan com­bines com­plex lay­er­ing with pleas­ant sim­plic­ity, tra­di­tional reli­gion with per­sonal belief, and expert instru­men­tal lines with mas­ter­ful vocals. Curse Your Branches is a beau­ti­fully played, con­structed, and recorded album.

This post is tagged 70-79, David Bazan