new music mondays: david bazan;

I’ve been struggling with the idea that Curse Your Branches is David Bazan’s first “solo” album, or at least his first under his own name: the Pedro the Lion frontman has been a part of that mp3-blog certified selection of my iTunes for so long now his dark, almost deadpan voice has become as familiar to me as some of my more regular namedrops. It’s a record that will always put me in mind of this year’s American adventure, not because I heard it there but because it was released while I was over and I scoured record shops in two or three different states looking for a copy. Worth it? You betcha.

I didn’t know the story of the album’s creation before I settled down to listen properly, on a bus to Kilmarnock driving into the autumn sunlight. The Chicago Reader has referred to Curse Your Branches as a “breakup album“, in which the once avowedly Christian singer-songwriter turns his back on God. However, I certainly picked up on its themes: I find the complicated spiritual relationship, as interpreted through such lyrics as those of Craig Finn or John Darnielle, of particular artistic interest perhaps because of my own such relationship.

The album’s theme is God, certainly, but I also picked up on a sense of having to let go of control – faith’s final step, and the one I have always had the biggest problem with. Nowhere is this more evident than in its title track:

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

Sound bleak? Well, that’s the beauty of this album: that it isn’t, not really. Sure its downbeat moments play out beautifully, with Bazan’s subtle voice rolling like the harbinger of doom, but songs like “Please Baby Please”, “Bearing Witness” and “When We Fell” come across almost playful. Less a breakup with God than one side of an ongoing, unresolved conversation; proud and unafraid.

DOWNLOAD:David Bazan – When We Fell
LISTEN: to David Bazan on Myspace
BUY: Curse Your Branches at Amazon.co.uk