A Note on Bazan

Anyone who knows me knows I have an affinity for slightly depressing music. I've been a fan of Pedro the Lion since I first came to know about them. The lead singer, David Bazan, always struck me as extraordinarily honest in his struggles with his Evangelical upbringing. As someone who came from a similar background, it was comforting to find someone that sometimes wavered between steadfast faith, apathy, and apostasy. From the overtly Christian It's Hard to Find a Friend, to questioning all forms of relationships on the soul-crushing Control, to the more nuanced Pedro the Lion's Achilles Heel - whenever I wanted a bitter dose of reality, or when I wanted to think more about the relationship between my faith, reason, and how it affects my relationships, I always listened to Pedro.

After their demise, Bazan went solo and while I enjoyed his work with Headphones, I started to see a darker trend in his lyrics. With his solo EP Fewer Moving Parts, I thought the situation mostly absolved, but something felt different. In a few discussions with friends who checked out his newest album Curse Your Branches, I realized, probably for the first time that Bazan had abandoned the faith almost entirely. This latest album is harsh and cynical - but in a much more overt way than previous projects at least to my ears. However, I understand that this is simply the logical conclusion once a person of faith finally manages, for whatever reason or in whatever way, to undermine the very foundation of their convictions. I realized that we had reached two different conclusions. The lynchpin, as it seems often the case, is the traditional problem of evil.

I'm not going to attempt to solve the problem of evil in this post, however, for the sake of clarity, I will say that I do understand the problem of evil to be a real problem. It's logically valid, if the given premises are true. I find a few of the premises to be questionable (and therefore, my faith to be logically true), but it isn't something I take lightly. It's still there. It's stolen former friends away from the faith because they could not hold faith and wrestle with the problem of evil or because they bought into (and perhaps misapplied) the philosophy of Descartes, scrapped their entire worldview, and attempted to build it back up from scratch with themselves at the center (leaving out God completely, as some of Descartes later critics would).

I'm still watching Bazan, albeit from a distance now. I have always loved his honesty, and I even continued to support him after the rather infamous moment where he showed up to the Cornerstone Festival drunk with a full jug of vodka on stage. I'm not naive enough to spin his new lyrics into anything else than they are: a call to question one's beliefs and recaps of fairly harsh life stories. I have no problem with either, but it does give one pause to think about how people reach different conclusions with similar backgrounds. I'd wager Bazan and myself would come to different conclusions on that as well.

In any case, I do still recommend any and all of Pedro the Lion's body of work. It's best when enjoyed with a strong beer or something stronger - in moderation, of course.