Review Summary: "Just hit it all back, don't attack / they'll make mistakes and start questioning everything."
David Bazan has been consistently outspoken about his aggrieved relationship with and subsequent separation from American Christianity. Outside of the confines of his musical output, particularly within the last decade, Bazan has publicly walked the internally suffocating path of no longer living life within the religion, while bearing witness to the corruption of many of his childhood touchstones by political grifters, as well as the allegiance of many of his friends and neighbors rapidly shifting from God to power. While Bazan’s cynicism towards the political process has been on display since 2000’s superlative
Winners Never Quit, he has mostly remained content to discuss these themes through third-person narratives and broad conceptual frameworks. Since Pedro the Lion’s reunion, however, this formula has been turned completely on its head by a planned five-album cycle that aims to chronicle Bazan’s entire childhood experience, using each major location he grew up in as a thematic North Star. The previous two offerings in this cycle, 2019’s
Phoenix and 2022’s
Havasu, had plenty to say regarding spirituality, self-worth, and loss of innocence, but
Santa Cruz presents itself as a whole different lyrical animal by going straight for the throat, and explicitly detailing Bazan’s initial struggles with religion in his teenage years.
As with the vast majority of Bazan’s creative output,
Santa Cruz is narratively spellbinding, and masterful at steadily ratcheting up the stakes as young David’s cognitive dissonance becomes more and more pronounced throughout the album’s runtime. The record’s somber opening number, “It’ll All Work Out”, reads like a prayer that would seem unimaginably foreign to American evangelicals today, its narrator bowing before his God to ask for a selfless, friendly spirit to more effectively reach out to those in need. As he enters his new school with his head down on the rollicking title track, he begins to notice that hiding beneath his embarrassing bright green backpack won’t quite be enough to shield him from all the different perspectives that aim to threaten his worldview, even from other friends who he meets at church and appear to believe all the “right things”. What is truly pitch perfect about
Santa Cruz, and Bazan’s writing style in general, is his refusal to frame his questioning of his upbringing as any sort of victory or significant acquisition of freedom. If anything, Bazan finds himself feeling even more imprisoned as he enters his college years and truly begins to think for himself. Listeners are given a front row seat as he recounts himself lying to his relatives about what he’s doing with his life on “Spend Time”, realizing that the church’s militant beliefs about sex have given it mastery over him on the title track and “Tall Pines”, and reflecting on how the promise of religious community has actually resulted in the loneliest decade of his life on gutting closer “Only Yesterday”.
This crisis is an important one to document, especially given the environment that many American teenagers are growing up in today, and it could have shaped up to be one of the best albums of the year if its musical presentation matched its lyrical fervor. Its instrumental identity primarily revolves around glacial keyboard tones and slow tempos that occasionally border into agonizing territory. The songs that wear this identity most successfully are those that are able to put positive spins on its barebones formula, such as the title track with its highly energized and memorable chorus, “Little Help” with its shapeshifting structure and cascading arpeggios, and the captivating emotional arc of late album highlight “Parting”. Other tracks rely too heavily on the cold and uninviting keyboards to effectively draw in the listener, such as the disappointing “Don’t Cry Now”, while single “Modesto”’s ill-advised key change and country-adjacent leanings swing and miss where the equally adventurous “Little Help” hits a home run. Regrettably, a few too many musical missteps prevent
Santa Cruz from being a truly great album, although I still recommend giving it a listen. For those familiar with Bazan’s style and catalog, it will represent another instance of success from a tremendously gifted songwriter, while those dipping their toes into his work for the first time may find themselves alienated. Regardless, anyone can find at least one powerful story or memorable moment to latch onto here, and for those who may need
Santa Cruz more than others at this point in time, the attachment could end up being lifelong.
