This demonstrates how out of the loop I am: I hadn’t even known that David Bazan had officially retired the “Pedro the Lion” name until I read a blurb about his new album on eMusic. His new EP, titled “Fewer Moving Parts” is basically 5 songs done in two different versions, once electric with a full band and once acoustic. I haven’t listened to it yet but I might in the future. I used to be a big Pedro the Lion fan, but after awhile, I realized that listening to his music was a depressing experience. So, I more or less stopped listening to it – especially the most recent stuff. This is the same reason I stopped listening to The Magnetic Fields. I appreciate that he is willing to grapple with the tough issues in life, as opposed to most Christian musicians, but I don’t want to be left bereft of hope.
Anyway, the blurb on eMusic contains a quote from what is probably a very interesting book on Christian rock: Body Piercing Saved My Life by Andrew Beaujon. In the book the author describes David Bazan thusly:
“Sort of the house cynic — the guy at work who’s like, “This place sucks” and never gets fired.”
That seems about right. I should check this book out sometime – not that I’m a big fan of Christian rock, per se, but I am interested in how Christian culture interfaces with secular culture and music is one of the most visible interfaces.
Final note: if you are looking for Christian music that is willing to admit that life is not all smiles and sunshine but does not insist on wallowing in the pits of despair, check out Andrew Peterson. I saw him open for Caedmon’s Call in 1997 at Grove City College and I’ve kept track of him ever since. From my perspective, his best albums are Love and Thunder, Behold the Lamb of God (which is a Christmas album with mostly original songs) and The Far Country (his three most recent albums, not including his recent B-sides collection). He is a talented musician and songwriter and his songs will help to connect you to the love that God has for you in the midst of your imperfection and weakness.
[Insert Witty Title Here] 
If you read my blog you’d know about DB dropping the PtL name!
It’s possible to listen to depressing music without it being a depressing experience.
That Beaujon book is on my Christmas list.
The new DB EP is good.
I guess I must have missed that entry…
Let’s look at the word “depressing”. This word means that it depresses; it has the action of causing an agent to be depressed. Thus, if one is prepared to label music as depressing, then, by definition, it depresses. You may counter that it depresses some people and not others. Well, then, I am one of those people upon whom it has a depressing effect. The bottom line is that I would prefer to be uplifted than depressed. Plus, I don’t feel that I have an obligation to anyone to face “reality” or confront life’s ugliness – at least not by listening to a few songs.
Yeah, I think I’d like to read that book as well.
Maybe I’ll check it out.
Have you heard of Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music? Here’s their little blurb:
They have some several clips on the website. It looks extremely low budget, but well done. They interview David Bazan and Danielson Familie and others. Maybe I’ll write a post about this….
Thanks for pointing that out, Pat. I just checked Netflix and you can get this DVD from them… Adrian, maybe you should add this to your queue, along with a big helping of Rick Sebak, of course.
Said movie’s already gone through the ol queue. It was pretty good. The interviews were good and overall it was pretty interesting.
I also added all the Sebak movies they had a couple weeks ago, although I’ve only gone through one or two of them so far.
Are you on the Netflix, Colin? Maybe we could be Netflix ‘friends’?
I am not on Netflix now, but my mom was saying that she had been thinking about giving us a membership as a gift for the winter. Maybe we can be friends in a few months…