David Bazan – Curse Your Branches

David Bazan, formerly the front man for the band Pedro the Lion, has recently released his first solo album.  For those of you familiar with Pedro the Lion, you’ll know that it was a band that often skirted the edges of Christian themes but managed to defy the label “Christian.”  After listening to this album, one is left to wonder if Bazan has lost his faith altogether or whether he has regained a more chastened, honest faith.  Whichever it is, Curse Your Branches is a profound bit of theology as Bazan wrestles with the aspects of faith that he finds troubling, as well as the difficulties of his own struggles with alcoholism.  The album starts off with a song called “Hard to Be.”  Here’s the first verse:

you’ve heard the story
you know how it goes
once upon a garden
we were lovers with no clothes
fresh from the soil
we were beautiful and true
in control of our emotions
til we ate the poison fruit
and now it’s hard to be
hard to be, hard to be
a decent human being

The concept of sin factors in heavily in his songwriting, but the bigger issue for Bazan is God’s role in the human condition.  In the powerful title track, Bazan uses these words:

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

And again in the closing track, “In Stitches”—here are the full lyrics:

my body bangs and twitches
some brown liquor whets my tongue
my fingers find the stitches
firmly back and forth they run
i need no other memory
of the bits of me i left
when all this lethal drinking
is to hopefully forget
about you
i might as well admit it
like i even have a choice
the crew have killed the captain
but they still can hear his voice
a shadow on the water
a whisper in the wind
on long walks with my daughter
who is lately full of questions
about you
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
like you might have bit off
more than you could chew

The record is full of thought-provoking lyrics like these.  And, by the way, the music is really good too.  Enjoy.