David Bazan - Blanco (2016)

David Bazan has never had the answers. His first two solo records, 2009's Curse Your Branches and 2011's Strange Negotiations lived inside questions. Questions of politics, of relationships, of addiction, and of God. For anyone looking to art to remove doubt, Bazan is not that refuge. With a catalogue that orbits the darkest corners of the human experience, his songs are the tiny pinprick of light, the first breath coming up for air, the rest stop on a trip with no destination. Having spent half of the last decade on tour, away from home, Bazan wrote his new songs from the wandering life of a traveling troubadour. And while there is joy in that life, Blanco is born of its challenges. It's what, and whom, he leaves at home that you hear on Blanco. Made up of tracks that were previously available in a very limited edition 7" vinyl series called Bazan Monthly, Volume 1 and Volume 2, Bazan started the project to see what kind of songs would come if he sat down in a small bedroom in his basement, propelled by a deadline, kids sleeping upstairs, and wrote from the duality that had blocked him from writing before - what it means to have a home, and have to constantly leave it to make ends meet. These are home songs, songs about returning, songs about not quite knowing what it means to return. They long for home with the ache of a child, and they dissect that longing with a surgeon's precision. They also signal the end of the organic singer/songwriter mode that he never loved but seemed to be mired in anyway, with delay and distortion binding layers of drum machine and synth together. Guitar comes in as a sweet reminder of where he started, but stays sparse. Blanco continues to ask questions, but they are the questions of a man who has found contentment within them. Who has somehow, against odds, made a home in them.