Since shelving Pedro The Lion a decade ago and then loudly renouncing Christian doctrine on 2009’s solo Curse Your Branches, David Bazan has been a perpetual music machine. 2011’s Strange Negotiations found Bazan continuing to document his faith crisis as well as the world’s ills, while his schedule of full-band club shows and solo house gigs kept him on an endless-tour treadmill, away from his true anchors of home and family. Blanco, Bazan’s first album in five years, blends his conflicted ruminations on the home he’s missed with a sparse guitar/synth/drum-machine rejection of his singer/songwriter persona, a purposeful statement as potent as the angry doubt on Branches.
Bazan’s bitterest observational pills have always been made tolerable by his achingly sweet melodicism, which is displayed throughout Blanco. On the wobblingly beautiful “Kept Secrets,” Bazan notes, “Every lion knows he’ll die alone,” above a haunting synth and a forcefully strummed acoustic, while “With You” burbles with ’80s tainted love as he revisits the timeline of his necessarily long-distance relationship. Like Bazan’s best work, Blanco is simultaneously uplifting and melancholic, hopelessly hopeful and beautifully dented.
—Brian Baker
