David Bazan, Curse Your Branches

David Bazan, Curse Your Branches (Barsuk, 2009)

Even counting Sufjan Stevens, there is no artist currently making music whose faith (or the potential lackthereof) is given as much attention as the faith of David Bazan. Once one of the poster children for hip Christians hoping to tout how cool Christian music could be, Bazan has  become a bizarre combination of backslider, prophet, and potential prodigal son.  The package is damn near irresistible for Monday Morning Pastors – he comes from an evangelical background; he writes compelling lyrics that have always poked and prodded generic evangelical values (yes, even before Derek Webb), asking questions most church-goers have thought, but never vocalized; and he’s been very open about his agnosticism and/or apostasy.

I have long counted him one of my favorite musicians, so I have a difficult time separating the mythology of David Bazan from the fact he’s just another guy expressing his doubts, troubles, and frustrations with life through song.  The problem is Bazan’s lyrical content has always invited people to play armchair theologian and/or psychologist – when you sing about your struggles with God, your family, and your belief system so brazenly, it’s hard to persuade people to not talk about it along with you.  And I think the beauty of Curse Your Branches, the first full-length album Bazan has released under his own name (i.e. not as Pedro The Lion or Headphones), is that it’s a gloriously transparent effort, autobiographical almost to a fault, yet oddly welcoming, encouraging people to discourse with the singer-songwriter as never before.

It’s as if he knows people are going to pick apart his songs to the barest of bones, searching for some hidden passage into his psyche and soul.  The often brash, snarky tone that marked his music (one masked by his supremely tired and world-weary delivery) has departed, as Bazan displays his most mature, grown-up side yet.  The result is an album filled with his best music since Control and his sharpest, most pointedly creative lyrics since It’s Hard To Find A Friend.  To put it another way, Curse Your Branches is the anti-Achilles Heel – where the latter (his last album as Pedro The Lion) was rather rude and tacky in spirit, this new record finds Bazan willingly embracing his role as Dad, Son, Man, and Husband, complete with all the troubles and issues bound to arise along the way.

There’s a fresh vitality to this album absent from much of his more recent music.  Bazan has seemingly absorbed the best and brightest of alt-country, rock, and pop textures from the past five years, resulting in a project that is at first warm and inviting, before cranking out toe-tappers almost two-step ready.  The keyboards of Headphones have been paired nicely with the moping indie rock of Pedro The Lion, while some warbling lead and slide guitars sidle nicely into the mix.

Lyrically, Bazan has employed a substantive quantity of Biblical imagery, but it’s of the sort that both Christians and post-/non-Christians would understand. Curse Your Branches opens with “Hard To Be” where Bazan discusses the Garden Of Eden (i.e. the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil) and the seemingly impossible expectations God has placed upon humanity.  On “Bless This Mess,” he runs through a long list of unfortunate people in their ugly situations and declares God should certainly bless all humans, despite our collective and individual moral unsightliness (including the line “God bless the history that doesn’t repeat.”).  With “When We Fell,” he asks God quite plainly why things have to be so difficult, right down to the ostensible overuse of riddles and parables that have caused theological argument and confusion throughout world history.

“Bless This Mess”, from Curse Your Branches

The record closes with “In Stiches,” a painfully honest ode to God, as Bazan talks about his abuse of alcohol to wash over his emotional and spiritual wounds and how he’s not sure how to answer the questions his young daughter has about God.  It’s this song, complete with the line, “The crew has killed the captain, but they still can hear his voice,” that resounds so very deeply for me, because, as is Bazan’s wont (whether intentional or not), he always finds a way to give voice to all of the comments, questions, concerns, and doubts I have with institutional Western Christendom.  It’s songs like this that serve to define this man’s status amongst honest people across the spectrum of Christian belief, from fundamentalists to people who have left the church because they don’t know how to believe any more.

Curse Your Branches is a sublimely philosophical and heartily catchy record that both stands up tall next to classics from Pedro The Lion, and possible even beyond.  Bazan, as never before, realizes he doesn’t have the answers and he really doesn’t expect to find them any time soon, but that’s not going to stop him from continually asking questions.  He’s a man after Job, David and Abraham’s collective heart.