David Bazan – Live at Locals Only

Ecstasy described my reaction to the news that David Bazan (Pedro the Lion) was eschewing his electronic side project Headphones in favor of back-to-basics songcraft for his next venture. The first result of that has been the Fewer Moving Parts EP, which came a bit thin in and erratic in 2006 but promises a full-length release late this spring.

“Fewer moving parts” alludes to the fact that Bazan’s sticking it out solo these days, which is great for how it reveals in the live show his peccadilloes and his cares, his voice and his words. And that, team, is a good thing. The perpetually grizzled troubadour (looking remarkably trim, by the way) landed in Indianapolis for the first time to a less-than-packed but enthusiastic room of lovers. He took the stage and started strumming even before anyone realized he was there. It was unobtrusive and quick; it was as it should be.

The solitary Bazan seems consumed on this new stretch of road with explaining himself. “Man, I could have made a big sound, but I love to let my friends down/ Fewer moving parts means fewer broken pieces,” he barks on the EP’s title track. Wielding just his throat and an electric axe (as opposed to the sharp one he totes on the EP’s cover art), Bazan’s packed some meat onto the ribs of his songs. His interpretations were hilarious and stark and disconcerting all at once; it’s his trade that became a brand long ago.

Another newer song, “Selling Advertising,” arrived in its present state, as a sendup of Pitchfork. (The site gave that EP a middling 5-out-of-10 rating.) The song’s title informs us as to its point, and yet, aside from the age-old Christians vs. Jews controversy he rather bizarrely drums up in it, Bazan’s less scathing than he could have been. Is this the married, tame lion we’ve got now? Has someone seen our big mean cat? Please bring him back.

In truth, yesteryear’s tenderhearted but fiery lion emerged in places on this eve. The zinging line from Pedro’s “Foregone Conclusions” came live as a very real and alternately wounded/wounding indictment of modern evangelical Christians: “You were too busy steering the conversation toward the Lord/ To hear the voice of the Spirit telling you to shut the fuck up.” Ouch. And among the set who turn out to hear Bazan play, it surely strikes a few incisive chords, in a few different ways.

Continuing to yuk it up about his aloneness, the singer also plucked from Pedro’s last disc, Achilles Heel, the song “Bands With Managers,” which describes such acts as “going places.” Does Bazan find himself doing the same? It’s hard to tell, but he’s got gusto yet for songs he wrote a good while back. The lyrical largesse of “Of Minor Prophets And Their Prostitute Wives” and “When They Really Get To Know You They Will Run” gave just as much on a cold winter night in 2008 as they did years ago.

Among the new ditties, “Please Baby Please” stuck out for its melodramatic tale of a daughter who grows up to be a drunk-driving killer. So it goes with David Bazan, eh? The content’s hardly ever pretty, as lush as it often sounds.

I’d be remiss not to note that, in this stripped-down setting, Bazan’s roar of a singing voice shone through all the more. Fewer moving parts apparently also means another one glowing all the more. He has a falsetto that more than holds up; he is – and this is no slight – a deceptively good singer.

Before a three-song encore (“I don’t really believe in encores,” he muttered), Bazan laid into what he promised would be included on the coming LP: yet another cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” The song that launched a thousand pretenders (sans Jeff Buckley, paging Imogen Heap) actually surprised on this night – or Bazan did, rather, as with his bellow in full effect he tore through the many titular exclamations in the song. This was not your coma-inducing, Garden of Eden-variety cover. It flat-out rocked.

We didn’t have to prod the guy for the usual live accoutrement: He was always the one to announce it was time for another Q&A session, though they were brief and numbered but three. The best line came when someone queried his favorite food; he responded with fruit, dried fruit even – for real? this guy may be the hardest, softest human alive – before mentioning his wife makes some “bad-ass salmon.” This garnered a round of chortling from all comers.

That’s the thing about David Bazan: He’s damn funny. He’s also serious as hell and committed to ripping the establishment (usually the Christian kind). Even he’s remarked recently that it gets tiresome and personally taxing to keep talking about God. As the closeted believer or can’t-quite-let-go agnostic or whatever he is and ascribes to these days, he still has a knack for making us think and laugh and want to cry within the same minute of a song. Come what may for this party of one, he remains full of some holy shit.

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