David Bazan, Say Hi

It's not exactly a secret that David Bazan's closet contains some skeletons of the Bible-toting variety. Bazan, the son of a Pentecostal music minister, has sown seeds of doubt into his frank, parable-like songs for the last decade. Since Pedro the Lion dissolved in 2005, Bazan's solo material has taken on more confidence, well, lack of confidence when it comes to matters of faith—going from lyrics like "Tell you why I doubt it/And why I still believe" to "I discovered hell to be the poison in the well/So I tried to warn the others of the curse."

And that's just what Bazan seems determined to do with Curse Your Branches, his first post-Pedro full-length solo effort. A number of reviews have called his Barsuk debut a "breakup album" where God gets dumped—but, no disrespect intended, and God aside, Curse Your Branches comes across like a breakup album for a generation that's fed up with meaninglessness, unanswered questions and Bible-belt backwardness taking precedent over common decency. Hopefully, he'll keep pokin' around in the cobwebs of that skeleton-filled closet of his for answers.

For this tour, Bazan has scratched together a great backing band, so, while it's not gonna be a Pedro the Lion show, it'll be real close. Seattle's Say Hi opens.