News

David Bazan’s Fight With Faith

2:25 p.m. · July 31, 2009 · by Jim Hanke

Yesterday, the Chicago Reader published an engaging article on the struggles that singer/songwriter David Bazan of Pedro the Lion fame has endured as of late, be they with his faith or his fan-base.

Written by Jessica Hopper, who dutifully notes that she did a stretch of PR work for Bazan in the early part of the decade, the story covers his 2005 debacle at Cornerstone (“He was booted off the grounds… a milk jug full of vodka in his hand”) and his recent return to the festival, performing his most lyrically-polarizing material yet.

Hopper attempts to nail down what Bazan’s Christian fans like or dislike about the artist’s newfound agnosticism, but the heart of the story is Bazan’s own realization that, for him, “there is enough right here to know how to act, to know how to live, to be at peace with one another” without falling in line with the teachings he’s known over thirty years.

Bazan’s first solo full-length, Curse Your Branches, is due out September 1^st on Barsuk. [Chicago Reader]