David Bazan, "Curse Your Branches" 04/20/2010
By Doug Kaplan
✭✭✭ ½
There are three distinctive events that occurred in my childhood that I largely credit with having shaped who I am as a person.
The first was a discovery that happened in fifth grade. Until that point my mother had obediently packed my brown bagged lunch with those ever popular Polly-O String cheeses, never missing a beat, with the exception of April 5th 1996 when my cheese curiously slipped into my sister’s lunch pale causing the catastrophic collapse of my world largely referred to as The String Cheese Incident by my extended family. The real discovery, however, occurred when suddenly I had begun to balloon and no longer felt comfortable playing pool basketball with the neighboring children. Cheese has a lot of fat, and that upset me. I will be sure to tell my children this fact while they are still in the womb, just to avoid any confusion that could occur later on in elementary school.
The second event involved being bitten by my families puppy, a curiously adorable Silky Terrier named Chester, when he had no interest in being woken up during the commercial breaks of Sunday night’s 60 Minutes. It was traumatizing to know that something so cute and cuddly was capable of attacking me.
It is for the same reason that even now, some twelve years later, I will no longer date blondes. While they are undoubtedly the most attractive females, I know that when push comes to shove they will most likely not stick around to make me omelets in the way John Lennon and Paul McCartney so faithfully described in “When I’m 64.” Furthermore, with this ridiculous craze of vampire films appearing, discussed in my Bondy review, I am rightfully scared of the cultural role-playing sure to emerge in my age group.
The last, and most significant event to shape my childhood, occurred in late 2005 when David Bazan announced his separation from Seattle’s truth-child Pedro the Lion. The band had produced low-fi midnight tunes that could captivate any and every audience by drastically altering the room’s mood.
From ‘95 to 2005, Bazan had various musicians backing his songwriting. In his bitch-slap single from his first solo effort EP, Fewer Moving Parts, Bazan writes
Fewer moving parts means fewer broken pieces
When every other start requires a brand new thesis
One good friend remarks with a rightfully angry
Jesus dude! None of us know what to do with you
To which I in pride responded
I've got news for you
None of you have to 'cause
I still run the show
It appeared that the curtain Bazan had encompassed most of Pedro’s metaphors with was no longer protecting anyone. He had an ultimatum, and he no longer cared who knew it. And this is dangerous.
This is dangerous because Bazan is such a brilliant songwriter. In just a decade he has joined the ranks of Conor Oberst, Jeff Mangum, and Elliott Smith. So after four official Pedro albums, one all-too-similar to Ben Gibbard’s Postal Service Headphones side project album, and one solo EP, we arrive at Bazan’s first official full-length solo effort. This would be similar to Rogert Ebert calling a documentary made this year by Peter Jackson his “first film.” Bazan has a ton of experience and I had very high expectations for his new album.
Curse Your Branches, a ten-song effort, was released earlier this month. It is different from his previous work in that it attempts to take an introspective look at spiritual events, rather than girlfriends and drinking, which compile most of his discography. The album begins with a largely instrumental track, “Hard to Be”, which builds so much momentum, it’s hard not to feel like Rocky at the top of that Philadelphia staircase when the refrain finally hits. It is here that Bazan begs for us to begin asking questions. It is hard to be/hard to be/a decent human being.
Track three, “Please Baby Please”, appeared acoustically on his American Flags EP released earlier this year. The track sounds better than ever and chronologically follows the life of his daughter. Those pair of two big blue eyes/stare me down and they watch me fall/but what makes a man realize/that he is about to lose it all. Track four, the title track, is unflickeringly the best song on the album. When every hired gun/I’ve ever fired/is making love to you/while I look on. The chorus is so stereotypically Bazan that it makes me laugh. He demands that all leaves curse their branches for not letting them decide where they should fall.
From this point on, the middle chunk of the album is the most captivating. The next song, “Harmless Sparks”, is a track Bazan had been pairing with an acoustic Christmas cover called “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” when played on promotional performances. It is here that the religious imagery can no longer be denied. They might have burned/but the priests were all taking turns/showing nuns what they had discerned/about their bodies/in the dark.
Track seven, “Lost My Shape”, brings back the familiar theme of alcoholism to long time fans. It reminds me specifically of a Kevin Devine track, mainly his newest single I Could Be With Anyone. It has a specifically calculated repetition representative of KD’s style. Nonetheless, it is still an easy listen, and much in the same way that Neo-realistic film was so boring that it forced viewers to think about other things, I found myself drifting into thought specifically around the words prodigal, prophecy, and burn as if they were dragging me by the coattail. Now you hate what you’ve made/and you want to watch it burn.
In Stiches, the concluding track, Bazan brutally continues his quest.
When Job asked you the question,
You responded, "Who are you
To challenge your Creator?"
Well if that one part is true,
It makes you sound defensive
Like you had not thought it through
Enough to have an answer
Or you might have bit off more than you could chew
Overall, the album did not let me down. Its topics are ones that will not get boring. In an interview during Manchester Orchestra’s documentary, Let My Pride Be What’s Left Behind, front-man Andy Hull makes note that since his songs are not about girlfriends the topics are not ones that will become boring and unemotional. I feel that this is specifically true about Curse Your Branches. I can not wait to see what questions Bazan asks next.
1. Hard To Be
2. Bless This Mess
3. Please, Baby, Please
4. Curse Your Branches
5. Harmless Sparks
6. When We Fell
7. Lost My Shape
8. Bearing Witness
9. Heavy Breath
10. In Stitches
✭✭✭ ½
There are three distinctive events that occurred in my childhood that I largely credit with having shaped who I am as a person.
The first was a discovery that happened in fifth grade. Until that point my mother had obediently packed my brown bagged lunch with those ever popular Polly-O String cheeses, never missing a beat, with the exception of April 5th 1996 when my cheese curiously slipped into my sister’s lunch pale causing the catastrophic collapse of my world largely referred to as The String Cheese Incident by my extended family. The real discovery, however, occurred when suddenly I had begun to balloon and no longer felt comfortable playing pool basketball with the neighboring children. Cheese has a lot of fat, and that upset me. I will be sure to tell my children this fact while they are still in the womb, just to avoid any confusion that could occur later on in elementary school.
The second event involved being bitten by my families puppy, a curiously adorable Silky Terrier named Chester, when he had no interest in being woken up during the commercial breaks of Sunday night’s 60 Minutes. It was traumatizing to know that something so cute and cuddly was capable of attacking me.
It is for the same reason that even now, some twelve years later, I will no longer date blondes. While they are undoubtedly the most attractive females, I know that when push comes to shove they will most likely not stick around to make me omelets in the way John Lennon and Paul McCartney so faithfully described in “When I’m 64.” Furthermore, with this ridiculous craze of vampire films appearing, discussed in my Bondy review, I am rightfully scared of the cultural role-playing sure to emerge in my age group.
The last, and most significant event to shape my childhood, occurred in late 2005 when David Bazan announced his separation from Seattle’s truth-child Pedro the Lion. The band had produced low-fi midnight tunes that could captivate any and every audience by drastically altering the room’s mood.
From ‘95 to 2005, Bazan had various musicians backing his songwriting. In his bitch-slap single from his first solo effort EP, Fewer Moving Parts, Bazan writes
Fewer moving parts means fewer broken pieces
When every other start requires a brand new thesis
One good friend remarks with a rightfully angry
Jesus dude! None of us know what to do with you
To which I in pride responded
I've got news for you
None of you have to 'cause
I still run the show
It appeared that the curtain Bazan had encompassed most of Pedro’s metaphors with was no longer protecting anyone. He had an ultimatum, and he no longer cared who knew it. And this is dangerous.
This is dangerous because Bazan is such a brilliant songwriter. In just a decade he has joined the ranks of Conor Oberst, Jeff Mangum, and Elliott Smith. So after four official Pedro albums, one all-too-similar to Ben Gibbard’s Postal Service Headphones side project album, and one solo EP, we arrive at Bazan’s first official full-length solo effort. This would be similar to Rogert Ebert calling a documentary made this year by Peter Jackson his “first film.” Bazan has a ton of experience and I had very high expectations for his new album.
Curse Your Branches, a ten-song effort, was released earlier this month. It is different from his previous work in that it attempts to take an introspective look at spiritual events, rather than girlfriends and drinking, which compile most of his discography. The album begins with a largely instrumental track, “Hard to Be”, which builds so much momentum, it’s hard not to feel like Rocky at the top of that Philadelphia staircase when the refrain finally hits. It is here that Bazan begs for us to begin asking questions. It is hard to be/hard to be/a decent human being.
Track three, “Please Baby Please”, appeared acoustically on his American Flags EP released earlier this year. The track sounds better than ever and chronologically follows the life of his daughter. Those pair of two big blue eyes/stare me down and they watch me fall/but what makes a man realize/that he is about to lose it all. Track four, the title track, is unflickeringly the best song on the album. When every hired gun/I’ve ever fired/is making love to you/while I look on. The chorus is so stereotypically Bazan that it makes me laugh. He demands that all leaves curse their branches for not letting them decide where they should fall.
From this point on, the middle chunk of the album is the most captivating. The next song, “Harmless Sparks”, is a track Bazan had been pairing with an acoustic Christmas cover called “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” when played on promotional performances. It is here that the religious imagery can no longer be denied. They might have burned/but the priests were all taking turns/showing nuns what they had discerned/about their bodies/in the dark.
Track seven, “Lost My Shape”, brings back the familiar theme of alcoholism to long time fans. It reminds me specifically of a Kevin Devine track, mainly his newest single I Could Be With Anyone. It has a specifically calculated repetition representative of KD’s style. Nonetheless, it is still an easy listen, and much in the same way that Neo-realistic film was so boring that it forced viewers to think about other things, I found myself drifting into thought specifically around the words prodigal, prophecy, and burn as if they were dragging me by the coattail. Now you hate what you’ve made/and you want to watch it burn.
In Stiches, the concluding track, Bazan brutally continues his quest.
When Job asked you the question,
You responded, "Who are you
To challenge your Creator?"
Well if that one part is true,
It makes you sound defensive
Like you had not thought it through
Enough to have an answer
Or you might have bit off more than you could chew
Overall, the album did not let me down. Its topics are ones that will not get boring. In an interview during Manchester Orchestra’s documentary, Let My Pride Be What’s Left Behind, front-man Andy Hull makes note that since his songs are not about girlfriends the topics are not ones that will become boring and unemotional. I feel that this is specifically true about Curse Your Branches. I can not wait to see what questions Bazan asks next.
1. Hard To Be
2. Bless This Mess
3. Please, Baby, Please
4. Curse Your Branches
5. Harmless Sparks
6. When We Fell
7. Lost My Shape
8. Bearing Witness
9. Heavy Breath
10. In Stitches
Comments
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 2:30:54 am
just to avoid any confusion that could occur later on in elementary school.
