David Bazan - Curse Your Branches
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CD Details
Artist: David BazanEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2009-08-31
Music Label: Barsuk
Soundtracks:
- Hard To Be
- Bless This Mess
- Please, Baby, Please
- Curse Your Branches
- Harmless Sparks
- When We Fell
- Lost My Shape
- Bearing Witness
- Heavy Breath
- In Stitches
Music reviews of Curse Your Branches
Music Review: niaga nrob
Rating: 4 Stars
I've been a fan of David Bazan's music for over a decade now, and it's good to see he is still going strong with this gloom and doom stuff he's so good at. Musically this disc does not delve into any unfamiliar territory whatsoever, it's the same kind of simple but effective pop hooks you'd expect from him, and it still works for the most part. This can be largely attributed to David's ultra-recognizable voice, thick and sad and like no other; I always thought that in the unlikely event that Disney makes an animated movie about a suicidal bloodhound, they should get David to do its voice.
At first listen, the lyrics seem pretty familiar too: faith and doubt and booze, etc. But apparently this is his first fully autobiographical endeavor, which takes place during and after some sort of emotionally turbulent spiritual awakening...his "breakup with God" is one way it's been described. As a person with no religious affiliation and also a fan of Pedro the Lion's "Christian" music, I was very interested in giving repeat listenings to Curse Your Branches in a nerdy attempt to grasp some of the reasons a person would make such a significant shift 35 years into his life. This turned out to be somewhat disappointing, if only because I consider Bazan to be one of the most thought-provoking lyricists in existence, and was perhaps expecting too much this time around.
In fact, some of the lyrics are downright silly. David takes easy potshots at pedophile priests (who have nothing to do with the song), blames God for "bullying" him into believing in Hell, and points out obvious inconsistencies between the word of the Bible and what we know to be reality. Take the opening track, "Hard to Be," in which David ponders the improbability that the story of the Garden of Eden happened word for word. He scoffs at the logic behind an "enchanted tree" and the story's "magical explanation" for original sin, and he sings as if he believes he's breaking new ground, exposing some deep conspiracy. This strikes me as odd since his lyrics have always been more philosophical than blindly theological anyway. Anyone with half a brain raised with Christian indoctrination will tell you that questions concerning the literality of biblical stories start around the age of say, five. So I have always assumed that people who retain their faith as adults (the reasonable ones, not the crazies) have come to terms with the fact that stories from the Bible are not meant to be taken as factual documents, but as moral guidelines, the potency of which is irrelevant in relation to whether or not they actually occurred. So why did it take David an extra three decades to start asking these questions? I have a theory about this.
Nothing against AA, but it's well established that their religious agenda is thinly, if at all, disguised. Many "born agains" put their faith in a Christian deity as a symbol of shedding their past lives as addicts of some sort. A "born again" is convinced that lack of spirituality has been a major cause of his or her chronic dependency. David follows this exact pattern, but his lifelong affiliation with Christianity deems that he must be "born again" in reverse. His newfound agnosticism is symbolic of his freedom from the shackles of alcoholism, and for him, faith was a big part of the problem.
He makes a few brief mentions of his daughter on this disc. His fears and concerns of the quality of his parenting come off as genuine, so these brief moments stand out, and the true motivation for the songs becomes clear to the listener. It should be noted that he does not seem to be exploiting her existence for the sake of his music, such as (for lack of a better example) Eminem likes to do.
Curse Your Branches misses the mark at times, and is rarely as powerful or as humorous as anything on Achilles' Heel or Control, but all in all it's pretty hard not to like it. "Lost My Shape" is by far the best track.
Description of Curse Your Branches
Revered for his work fronting the influential group Pedro The Lion, Curse Your Branches is David Bazan's first full-length release under his own name. It's a flat-out masterwork by a modern American poet at the height of his powers (Paste Magazine called him a Dostoevsky for our all-at-once world and one of the 100 Best Living Songwriters alongside indie-rock stalwarts like Iron and Wine's Sam Beam, Mountain Goats' John Darnielle, and Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst, andlegends like Nick Cave, Merle Haggard, Sly Stone, Dolly Parton, Kris
Kristofferson, and John Prine and that's not even listing any of their Top 20).
Pedro the Lion got started playing to the Christian rock scene, but the narrative arc of Bazan's albums has increasingly traced his crisis of faith and his questioning of the Evangelical world in which he was raised; while retaining the vast majority of his original audience, the strength and subtlety of his work also has built a large secular audience and garnered him mainstream critical acclaim. Curse Your Branches is the deepest and most overtly autobiographical exploration of his theological struggles and resulting battle with alcohol to date, and a meditation on all things passed between the generations belief, doubt, love, addiction that showcases his incredible arrangements and melodic sense,
and, of course, the trademark dark humor, incisive lyrical economy, and light touch in dealing with heavy themes that has drawn comparisons to no lesser talents than Prine, Randy Newman, and Leonard Cohen.
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