David Bazan – Curse Your Branches
After more than ten years fronting the critically lauded Pedro the Lion, Seattle-based songwriter David Bazan decided to jump the shark and make music under his given name. Following on the heels of 2006′s EP Fewer Moving Parts is his highly anticipated, first full-length debut solo effort, Curse Your Branches. Despite the fact that the first half of the disc is a marked departure from his typical repertoire, it may arguably be his best release to date, and may even be one of the year’s best releases. Hailed by Paste Magazine as a “Dostoevsky of our time,” Bazan is as consistent and original as Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam, The Mountain Goat’s John Darnielle, Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and The Decemberist’s Colin Meloy. Others have compared him to the vaulted likes of Nick Cave, Merle Haggard, Sly Stone, Leonard Cohen, Kris Kristofferson, Randy Newman and John Prine, to name but a few. An on-again, off-again Christian, Bazan has spent the good part of the last 12 years writing songs that detail depression, self-doubt, death, faith, lack of faith, salvation, and an armful of other engaging concepts. His main bent is how to live a life of profanity and sin despite a religious upbringing, and he’s been known to wag a finger at gun-waving Christians and skewed foreign policy. Those themes, most notably the struggle with faith, and his battle with alcoholism dot the landscape of Curse Your Branches. Opening with enticing Death Cab-like piano, “Hard to be,” is a placid six-and-a-half-minute tour-de-force in which he sings about the pangs of growing up and taking responsibility. Vocally the song finds Bazan at strong as ever and it is arguably as confident an album opener as any released this year. His battle with faith and alcoholism is documented in mid-tempo second track “Bless This Mess,” which features a good dose of synths, calling to mind his Headphone days. He continues with his war against alcoholism on the desperate “Please, Baby, Please,” and though the chorus gets a bit repetitive, it’s hard to find flaws with someone this gifted. The album’s first real dip is in fifth track “Harmless Sparks,” but with Bazan nothing is ever a wash because his lyrical work is so engaging. That sentiment is entirely true on this one, as he sings, ”Then some grown men might be tempted to question their birthright, in front of their kids and devout wives, causing the doubt to begin, to spread like original sin.” The rockabilly strut of “When We Fall,” follows and lyrically its as strong as anything released this year. A calculated meditation on waning faith, the album dips and swirls in a way that mirrors the song’s chilly sentiment. On seventh track “Lost my Shape,” the album reaches its peak, as Bazan unravels a yarn about the emptiness and desperation of his struggle with alcoholism. Incredibly poignant, poetic and personal, “Lost My Shape,” is easily one of the year’s best songs and stands firm as one of Bazan’s best songs to date. Aided by a rousing organ, and a heavy alt. country bent, it’s gorgeously sung and features one of the disc’s best choruses. On the heels of that is the toe-tapping shuffle of “Bearing Witness,” as he sings, ”I’m so sick and tired of trying to make the pieces fit, because that’s not what bearing witness is.” The album finishes with the Beach Boys-inspired “Heavy Breath,” which starts off strong but falters at the end, and the plodding “In Stitches,” which seems to collapse under the weight of the album’s earlier home runs. Through the course of his career, Bazan’s dry, woody baritone has never been much of a pick-me-up and often times it borders on monotonous, but on Curse Your Branches he seems to inject a newfound life into his timbre, and as an end result, these songs. Working with longtime collaborator and Headphones co-founder T.W Walsh, the album is a masterwork in navigating the depths of misery and the pangs of desperation. Being that it’s his most personal album, it makes sense that his surname appears on the title. Which ponders the question, if this is what his music sounds like as Bazan, why didn’t he make music under his surname, more often?
