The first song on Santa Cruz, the seventh full-length album from Seattle’s Pedro the Lion, paraphrases no fewer than four separate Bible verses. More to the point, singer-songwriter David Bazan speaks in the kind of idioms that anyone who’s attended a Wednesday night youth group or summer church camp could instantly clock. Bazan repeats the lines, “If I make myself friendly/Put others’ needs before my own/Don’t let my heart be hardened,” then ends “It’ll All Work Out” with one load-bearing word: “Lord.” If the hymnal lyrics, somber synth notes, and slow-boiling discordance hadn’t fully illustrated his cry of prayer, the picture is complete now.
This has been Bazan’s superpower from the start. He speaks to specific experiences with the requisite references, yet he doesn’t alienate the uninitiated. The Conflicted Christian, the Struggling Addict, the Anti-Corporatist, the Angry Ex, the Disillusioned American—all complex viewpoints vividly inhabited across Pedro the Lion’s discography. But since the band’s return from a 15-year hiatus in 2019, Bazan has narrowed his framing devices. Phoenix triumphantly kicked off a planned five-album arc, pairing big, resonant guitar chords with stories of formative years spent in the titular hometown. Three years later, Havasu relaxed its grip on rock theatrics to gently explore the thrills and contradictions of being a lonely, God-fearing seventh grader. With Santa Cruz, Bazan brings the theme of life as the preacher’s kid whose family moved around a lot into tighter focus.
In just over a half hour, Santa Cruz spans a decade of Bazan’s life—from eighth grade into his early 20s, and the four cities he called home during that time. The songs cover an impressive amount of ground in painstaking detail, often within just a few minutes. The title track never drops its mid-tempo pulse as Bazan breathlessly recounts his embarrassing junior high backpack, C.S. Lewis novels, and how he can’t wait to get married and have sex. He’s never sounded so much like Mark Kozelek in his delivery, especially when the glut of stanzas forces him to cram in a line off-rhythm. “Teacher’s Pet” jumps from story to unfortunate story while fleshing out a bristly ode to teenage rebellion and learning through failure. The overtly Beatles-inspired “Little Help” shares how befriending a kid from church and discovering the White Album gave him confidence among the California beach town’s surfers and skaters.
Santa Cruz is packed with memories, musings, and personality, like a well-used diary covered in old stickers. But where the lyrics and themes are consistently charming, the music isn’t always. Bazan frequently uses synths in the arrangements, and their presence in some of the best songs is refreshing: Downcast and dejected, “Don’t Cry Now” revolves around a chunky arpeggio that—somewhat incredibly—sounds lifted from an old Junior Boys single. The bobbing keys and quiet guitar on album standout “Tall Pines,” at first so contained, burst to envelop Bazan’s unflinchingly measured delivery like a sudden fog. “Parting,” however, is about as middling and generic as Pedro the Lion’s indie rock gets—unfortunate given its moving story of a high school senior whose parents move once again, leaving him to finish the year in Seattle. At least when the music is less than compelling, there’s always an affecting story to follow.
