RIP - Pedro the Lion

David Bazan officially laid to rest the Pedro the Lion name in January, but the spirit lives on with his newly released (June 13th) solo EP, titled, "Fewer Moving Parts."

The record doesn't break any new ground for those die-hard fans of Bazan's work with PTL and Headphones. But the listener gets the sense that Bazan feels a great deal of freedom in being out from under the Pedro the Lion moniker.

A recent article in Sojourners online magazine (thanks Erik Fisher) describes a Bazan who has grown into his faith and seems to understand/accept his role, though he still "bristles when others...casually place the Christian label on him." This is not a new statement, but the explanation is new to me --

“People who use it to describe me are generally using it to be reductive of what I do or to imply that it’s invalid simply because [of my faith], and that makes me pretty angry.”

The EP is 5 tracks recorded twice -- once acoustic and once fully instrumented. This sounds uninteresting, but it works often like listening to Iron & Wine's cover of The Postal Service's "Such Great Heights" (my favorite cover ever - new list idea); only Bazan is covering himself. The recording of "How I Remember" in the fully instrumented version is frustrating to me, because the vocals are too much in the background - almost sounding muted...

Jade Tree is set to release a full-length solo Bazan record in 2007.