A Round of Sound

For some reason, I never got around to checking out the David Bazan DVD released last year until just recently when Dave mentioned on Twitter (@davidbazan) that the summer clearance sale on Undertow Music was extended.  So I figured it’d be a perfect time to snatch the DVD up.  If you’re not familiar with Bazan, then well, you probably actually are you just don’t realize it.  Up until 3 years ago Dave was known as Pedro the Lion and released 4 full-length albums under that moniker before retiring it and creating a new era as just David Bazan.  He was named one of the 100 greatest living songwriters by Paste Magazine back in 2006, and personally he’s my favorite songwriter/lyricist.  I’ve been lucky enough to see him a couple times in concert, once as a headliner and once opening for Death Cab and Ben Kweller.  Dave loves to take questions from the audience during the show, and it is pretty refreshing to hear an artist ask the crowd “Are there any questions at this point?” in between his songs.

The DVD consists of Bazan playing an assortment of songs from all his albums, including his lone Headphones release, and even one of his new tracks from his upcoming album Curse Your Branches slated for release on September 1st.  I wouldn’t say there is anything extraordinarily special about the DVD, but it’s pretty cool seeing Dave play his songs at home alone in front of the camera with just his guitar or piano.  It’s such a simple idea, but very well done.  One of the coolest moments is him playing bits and pieces of “Slow and Steady Wins the Race” while in his car stopped at an intersection, or in the gas station or even in his driveway as his wife pulls up with one of their kids.  But maybe the neatest part of the DVD is the interviews with Dave that take place in between a few of the songs.  Dave writes some of the most dark, tragic, and brutally honest lyrics about human nature and has an amazing knack of creating stories that get his points across.  However, he does not write autobiographically  so while it seems like deeply personal music, it’s really just his thoughts on religion, relationships, politics, family, or whatever told through his brilliantly crafted stories.  But at the same time, this is a married man with a family, so writing songs of doomed marriages and dysfunctional families is a pretty amazing subject matter for him to cover and has always been an interesting paradox.

So listening to his interviews is a very engaging look into the thought process of the man and his very intriguing world view.  He mentions that the upcoming album is actually fairly autobiographical for the first time in his music career, so it will be very interesting to see how and if his lyrics change when Curse Your Branches drops later this year.  The best interview on the DVD is the last which tackles the fact that Bazan rarely writes a happy song and he’s actually been challenged in the past to write a love song.  He responds by naming a few of his songs that he believes are, in his mind, songs of true love.  Hearing his defense of what he thinks of as love song captures his brilliance as a song writer perfectly and is absolutely refreshing to hear.  The last song performed on the DVD is “Please, Baby, Please” which is a song that will be featured on the new album, and is one of the songs Dave mentions as a love song.  Whatever you say Dave.  How this man’s mind works is something to be appreciated, and I’m sure happy he allows us a small glimpse into his world.

[“Please, Baby, Please (Demo)” – Bazan: Alone at the Microphone (DVD)]