Plumbiferous Media

David Bazan, front­man of ten-year (now dis­solved) indie group Pedro the Lion and now solo artist, released his sec­ond solo album, Strange Nego­ti­a­tions, ear­lier this month. Strange Nego­ti­a­tions keeps the tone of Bazan’s impres­sive 2009 solo debut, Curse Your Branches, with care­ful mod­i­fi­ca­tions and refine­ments that not only demon­strate Bazan’s progress but make for a good album. At the same time, how­ever, Strange Nego­ti­a­tions seems to have lost just a bit of the energy that was behind Curse Your Branches. It’s still a step up from that album (if a slight one), and a great lis­ten - but it’s one that occa­sion­ally feels like it could be a bit more exciting.

Well-crafted instru­men­tals grace the tracks of Strange Nego­ti­a­tions, from the title track’s care­ful open­ing to “Eat­ing Paper“‘s more involved build-up. Bazan tends not to use the most potent instru­men­tals pos­si­ble - they’re pow­er­ful, cer­tainly, but they tend to stay near the back of the music, while Bazan’s voice is afforded cen­ter stage. This isn’t nec­es­sar­ily a bad deci­sion, but it does from time to time give the music a slightly flat sound. For the most part, it’s a suc­cess­ful choice - Bazan is a skilled vocal­ist and song­writer, and it shows, just as it’s meant to. In those few moments, though, it stops the music from being as inter­est­ing as it could be - and that’s a pity.

Bazan’s voice is at once plain­tive and pow­er­ful - less of an odd mix than it might ini­tially seem, and quite pos­si­bly the only mix that could man­age what Bazan does. He man­ages to sound melan­choly with­out being depress­ing, resigned with­out being bor­ing, and enlivened with­out over­pow­er­ing the often-dark lyrics. It’s a bal­anc­ing act that Bazan is quite good at, and one that means that he can sing “You’re a god­damn fool / And I love you / Yeah, I love you” with­out it seem­ing a bit cliché. Bazan sets the tone of Strange Nego­ti­a­tions beau­ti­fully and expertly, giv­ing each word the emo­tional weight it deserves.

Lyri­cally, Strange Nego­ti­a­tions is quite good - not a sur­prise from David Bazan, but always a plea­sure. Bazan’s sug­ges­tion on “Future Past” is per­haps the best demon­stra­tion of the album’s tone - when he sings “Dig my new solu­tion for / Har­ness­ing deprav­ity / We’ll give every­one shot­guns / And cloaks of anonymity,” it’s cyn­i­cal as can be, but with an edge of humor that pre­vents it sound­ing too dark. That’s how Strange Nego­ti­a­tions works - replete with metaphors and with deep mean­ing to go along with them. Each track tells a story - often an odd one, but a story nonethe­less, and always one that expresses Bazan’s vision.

Strange Nego­ti­a­tions is a very good album, though it suf­fers from a few regret­table flaws. Graced with excel­lent vocals and lyrics, the album’s got quite a base to work from, and work from it it does. Thanks to that, the major­ity of the album comes out as a well-crafted mix­ture of every­thing David Bazan is best at. Unfor­tu­nately, from time to time, espe­cially when the instru­men­tals aren’t quite given their due, the album stops being as inter­est­ing as it could be, instead flow­ing by in a rather unre­mark­able way. For­tu­nately, this doesn’t hap­pen that often - but it’s dis­ap­point­ing, when com­pared to the suc­cesses of the rest of the album. On the whole, Strange Nego­ti­a­tions is a suc­cess - but there’s cer­tainly room for improvement.

This post is tagged 80-89, David Bazan