Photo by Lyle Owerko.
September 1, 2009, David Bazan released his, not just critically, but controversially acclaimed album Curse Your Branches: the aptly nicknamed “breakup with God” album. I had a short phone chat with King David about the record and what it meant to him.
Whether you’re a fan of David Bazan or not, it’s hard to be ignorant of his latest album considering the swarms of media attention it received with tracks like “Hard To Be” (Bazan’s argument that “all this misbehaving grew from one enchanted tree?”) and “When We Fell” (“when you set the table/when you chose the scale/did you write a riddle that you knew they would fail?” ). Media attention that, on a beautiful day in Oregon, he says did cause a bit of added stress in his life: “Not so much because it was public, but because the nature of publicity is aggressive. There was an added layer to the feeling of betrayal, to the degree that I experienced guilt over feeling like I had betrayed something true or profound from growing up, even if I felt that my conclusions were true.”
Bazan admits that it made him feel sloppy being unsure of what he believes and having to answer so many fluttering questions as if he was wholly confident. This is entirely understandable when going from the Christian posture of assurance and confidence to a realm of confusion. But his bitter pill with the Church had long since been digested and had begun to take effect. According to a former publicist of Bazan’s, since 2004 he had “been flitting between atheist, skeptic and agnostic.” He tells me that none of his revelations stemmed from anger: “I was critical of the popular practice of Christianity for years and years before I made this transition. I think it is common that people leave Christianity because of their frustrations with the Church. I was comforted by my core Christian beliefs, which ended up shedding light on how distorted the Church is. The logic of the “creator of the universe” character started to fall apart when I examined it more thoroughly.”
After such an exciting chat with David Bazan, I am even more stoked to go check out his set at The Old Rock House this coming Sunday, (March 14). I’ll see you there!
