Man, the sixties were weird, right? I’m trying to think through pop music history to find a more left-field cultural obsession than the sudden popularity of Indian raga in the later half of the 1960s, and I’m coming up short (maybe the bubble of whisper-quiet singer-songwriters in the mid 2000s, a-la Iron & Wine and his disciples?).

The ubiquity of raga in the ‘60s is perhaps best demonstrated in the discarded record collection I picked this out of: abandoned in a trunk on the side of the road between Emmylou Harris and Barry Manillow records (there was some Grateful Dead in there too). But you get the picture–everyone was listening to raga. It was so popular that it infiltrated even the most vanilla of record collections (to be fair, they also had a Pharoah Sanders record. I have a feeling it may have actually been a mixture of a parent and child’s collections). 

It’s not unexplainable though–in the (pseudo?) spiritual awakening of the hippie movement, scores of bands were already looking to India for philosophy and musical inspiration. And I’m talking the major players: The Byrds, Rolling Stones, and of course the Beatles, who spent months in India under the tutelage of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Even before the visit, George Harrison (who had a proper revival experience in India) added Indian flavors to his work without much diluting (see: “Within You Without You”). So naturally, in the same way that I started listening to Sunny Day Real Estate because all of my favorite bands cited them as an influence, many music fans in the 1960s went right to the source.
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And to unaccustomed Western ears, the source can be a little strong. This album features two instrumental pieces, each an entire side in length, performed only on sarod (an instrument I just heard about today—it’s like a small sitar) and the tamla (Indian hand percussion). Both start out slowly and quietly in meditative drones, building and accelerating through their runtimes to almost manic conclusions (pity that tamla players hands). The later sections are writhe with rhythm changes and shifting strong beats, slowly building in tempo until you’re not sure there’s anywhere left to build to. And when it reaches a breaking point, it crashes to conclusion, leaving nothing but a few seconds of the drone strings ringing out. The album is both contemplative and exciting, but if I’m going to listen to it more regularly, I’m going to need a lot more incense.

David Bazan has always made sad music. He cut his teeth as Pedro the Lion, the Christian slowcore band that made a name for themselves by being the sort of band that wasn’t afraid to confront the brutal honesty of their doubt or use harsh language in the Tooth and Nail crowd (though never while signed to T&N). But within that scene, his droopy eyed cynicism was always cut with a hint of redemption, knowing that, despite everything, God was still (at least mostly) good. Even on Control, Pedro the Lion’s most despondent release, there was solace in knowing that the godless main character was fictional.

Curse Your Branches, however, is David Bazan’s first full length released after publicly recanting his faith. Predictably, his already depressing brand of doubtful and self-deprecating lyricism is even more cutting when divorced from trust in God. On about half of the tracks, the weight is only lifted by pairing his words with upbeat pop songs. For instance, “When We Fell,” which asks God, “when you set the table and when you set the scale / did you write a riddle that you knew they would fail,” sung over a major keyed rock riff. The music can be a little disarming, until you listen to the lyrics a little more closely and have your heart drop out of your chest. 

The downtempo tracks are far less deceptive, but despite their minor keyed signifiers, they still catch you off guard. “Hard to Be” most directly refers to the aftermath of his fallout with God, challenging his Creator on putting us in that garden in the first place and mourning the divide between his family and himself that his doubt (or rather their continued faithfulness) has caused. “Lost My Shape” is a pointed fall-from-grace tale that is directed at no one in particular, but with lines like “you used to feel like the forest fire burning, but now you feel like a child throwing tantrums for your turn,” it’s hard to read it as a little autobiographical. After all, between disappointing his family (“Hard to Be,” “When We Fell”), failing his daughter (“Bless This Mess,” “Please Baby Please,” “In Stitches”), and heaping suspicion and anger on God (the whole album), he has pretty hard feelings toward himself. And with that in mind, while it is a deftly crafted and honestly written album, it is not one to be entered into lightly.

​One sidenote: I saw David Bazan play a house show shortly after his wife gave birth to their second child at home. He played Hard to Be, and after singing, “childbirth is painful,” shook his head and whispered “oh shit” before continuing to the next line.