Album Review
David Bazan-Curse Your Branches
3.5/5
Having read a number of reviews of this album everyone seems to be focused on the “Christianity” aspect of this album. That does after all seem to be his central theme here. When talking about writing this album lyrically, Bazan said that he mainly writes the songs and then goes back and tries to figure out what he is saying. So what you have is not only listeners trying to figure out what he is saying, but the artist himself doing the same thing. This straight up confusion of faith from the inner conscious of Bazan is what makes this album great.
On Curse Your Branches Bazan continues his trend of writing about all things broken. In the past it has been a broken family, a political system, the way businesses work and on his newest album he examines himself.  In the albums opening track “Hard To Be” Bazan starts the questioning the story from the beginning.
“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 to till we ate the poison fruit”
In the second track Bazan gets a little more introspective with the following lines, which happen to be my favorite of the album.
“By my baby´s yellow bed
I kissed to forehead and rubbed her little tummy
wondering if she´d soon despise the smell
of the booze on my breath like her mom
through a darkened mirror I have seen
my own reflection
and it makes me want to be a better man
after another drink.”
The album goes on from there focusing on the same subjects. God, the Child and alcohol. In reality this is what all of his albums have been about, but this time it’s personal.
As Bazan usually does, most of these songs were tested acoustic for a year or two before they ever met this album. Having heard a handful this way I was a little bit alienated by the album version. Bazan almost does a Beach Boys remix to two of his songs “Heavy Breath” and “Lost My Shape” that took me a couple of times to really fall for. They are a lot more fun the way they were done on the album than on tour in 2007.
Overall this album lives up to its’ hype. Compared to the rest of music coming out now it rates towards to top. Compared to Bazan’s own catalog of work it falls in the upper middle. That’s really hard to do though.
