David Bazan: Strange Negotiations [Barsuk]

Strange Negotiations [Barsuk]

7/10 dropps

I wouldn’t bet money on these words ever being uttered by David Bazan, but should he ever want to embody his oeuvre into some aesthetic sense of coherency, he might state the following: ”It’s Hard To Find A Friend when Control is The Only Reason I Feel Secure because my Achilles Heel is exposed when I think about how my father taught me that, ‘Winners Never Quit’, yet now my son might one day hear his father tell him to, ‘Curse Your Branches.’ I mean, really, my Progress, thus far, has led me to believe that sometimes Fewer Moving Parts are better than the Whole thing.” If you have ever read or listened to an interview with this man or absorbed any of his erstwhile projects (e.g. Pedro the Lion or Headphones), statements with such weight and gravitas might not seem surprising. Whether lyrical or ad-libbed, his words are sharp-witted, playfully critical, and mindfully contagious.

Since his early endeavors in Pedro the Lion, Bazan has undergone a self-inflicted love/hate (unsettling) relationship with Christianity and the Church. In his last album, performing under his now-steady solo act, he has cathartically gotten a testaments-amount of controversy off of his chest in the form of ten Job-skeptical tracks found on Curse Your Braches, which has now commonly been coined as his “breakup album with God.” As witnesses of his death and resurrection, both Bazan’s liberal and Christian-cored fans remain engaged, as his transfiguration has forced both sides of the spectrum to look inward and challenge themselves in their respective ideologies.

In an effort to keep his incumbency and idiosyncratic-charm strong, Bazan has prepared a nouveau feast for his wide-eyed, cultish disciples entitled Strange Negotiations [Barsuk]. Upon first listen, this album does not connote vibes or revelations of either Control or Branches and also seems to depict Bazan struggling with lyrics and instrumentation as some of the vocal melodies almost seem uplifted from past songs and a Headphones-toned synth riff is throw into the latter half of the record for good measure. Coming from a Bazan zealot, it must be mentioned that the fictional wit and sonic construction of the songs are not at their acme as they are cognitively stripped down and straightforward, yet are nonetheless still praiseworthy. To repeatedly keep one-upping his catalogue would be a Spartan miracle. So as a heads up, the record might be an acquired taste.

With the premise established and a feast to be had, Strange Negotiations commences with “Wolves At The Door” – an hors d’oeuvre for listeners to conscientiously consume. Two stick clicks, two tight snare hits with bass pedal, and some minimalistic guitar and bass melodies is all it takes for Bazan to build a platform for him to start blistering the words, “Surprise / They took your money / And they ate your kids / And they had their way / With your wife a ‘lil bit.” Using eisegesis, it seems as if these lyrics vaguely allude to the cradled nursery rhyme of the Three Little Pigs where the conniving wolf waits outside their doors to prey on the weak. As Bazan bellows his chorus, “ Cause you’re a goddamn fool / You’re goddamn fool / You’re a goddamn fool / And I love you / Yeah, I love you,” the weaklings of the song are the people who protect themselves and build their houses out of sticks and straw. Spoken from the horse’s mouth, the tail end of the song addresses how these “fools” are too close of friends and family to have full hostility towards them – issuing a very bitterly heartfelt dynamic.

So having nibbled on that fritter, “Level With Yourself” and “Future Past” provide the conversational space before the main course. Bazan promotes Strange Negotiations as more of a rock n’ roll album and riff-based, which is evidenced in “Level With Yourself.” An undulating tempo coupled with half-step licks and rudimentary chords dominants the sermon about being honest with yourself instead of telling your psyche what it wants to hear to cope with oneself. “Future Past” acts as a short breather to ponder the axiom embedded in it, “You can’t be right about the future / when you’re wrong about past” – definitely a classic, political punch from the gubernatorial hit man. As the tune gets stitched up with Pedro-esque feedback, it leads into the heart of the feast – “People” and “Virginia” – no, the title track has not been forgotten. An acoustic guitar is no stranger to the baritone-to-falsetto whistleblower and is integrated into “People.” This reaction puts crosshairs over 21^st century minds “who are selfish and mean” and that are titillated by “depraved and obscene” things. Tactfully opening with a subtle, voice-and-strumming-only profile allows an anthem to effloresce, which catches one off guard due to the syncopating drum work of Alex Westcoat, the bass-strong progression from Andy Fitts, plus Bazan’s powerful pedagogy: “And when you love the truth enough / You start to tell it all the time / When it gets you into trouble / You discover you don’t mind…And you gotta take your lumps / Or else they trickled down / Into someone else’s cup below.”

Acting as the remaining portion of this expressive entrée, “Virginia” lowers the adrenaline, yet intimately reminisces the personal closeness with a Class of ‘94 friend who is no longer living. The collection of: “Eating Paper”, “Messes”, and “Don’t Chance” can once again be used as conversational space to digest before the crème brûlée is served. These three aubades promotes autonomy – “I’m keeping my head down under the water / cause man I’ve got to get there on my own” – calls humans out on their cockamamie behavior – “Messes in the dark make headlines every morning / Everyone makes mistakes / Like it’s the only way we learn” – and satirizes complacency – “He tells himself that today I’ll make a change / But falling into his bed at night / He thinks man it was a beautiful day / to stay the same.”

Such is fine dining for a musical epicure, which then transitions into the toothsome, title track of the record, “Strange Negotiations.” If one was fortunate enough to catch Bazan on his last Living Room Tour, one would have heard this psalm as the opening song to his single-handed, acoustic set. The mood lighting for this psalm and the rest of the record is ambient and ominously hopeful. Drawing from the fact that a majority of musicians have a fallback chord, melody, beat, or subject matter – definitely not injurious to them – biblical illusions are definitely Bazan’s fallback. “You blew all your inheritance / And now you’re trying to pin the blame on me” can easily be traced to the parable of the Prodigal Son, who left home to squander all his inheritance and then wanted to be taken back in even after being so irresponsible – how politically relevant. The narrative of this song, and comprehensively the whole album, is how this troubadour and “a million other people” are forced to “feel like a stranger in [their] home town” due to the strange negotiations that are agreed upon to keep this country’s composure – or lack thereof.  For his closing statement, similar to how “The Poison” and “Slow Car Crash” are atypical love songs on Achilles Heel and Headphones, Bazan ends Strange Negotiations with the bitter-sweet billet-doux, “Won’t Let Go.” It’s still not your typical love song, such as The Cure’s, because it appears to be more about not letting “the fools” go than a lover of some sorts. However the passion and candor of this song and the record is overtly transparent.

Strange Negotiations emancipates a call to action as much as it does a cautionary monition. Honesty with self, socio-political criticism, and philosophical fervency for the truth puts this man on a mission like other subversive artists akin to this ideology. Once again, David Bazan sets out to continue doing what his musicianship does best – formulating iconoclastic expressions and allowing them to circumnavigate him wherever they might lead. And what better of a way to circulate them then through the vents of rock n’ roll. For his followers, his cadre, his apostles, I think after they have listened to Strange Negotiations, whether they are elated by it or not, can still solidify him as being a Rock of Ages.

-Zach Frimmel