Pedro The Lion

David Bazan’s return to his group name and his childhood haunts.

It’s a terrific idea. Over five albums as the resurrected Pedro The Lion, David Bazan plans to return physically and musically to places he once lived. 2019’s Phoenix dealt with his early years, before he moved cross-state to Havasu, a hillside community next to the imported London Bridge. Surprisingly heavy in the manner of a slower, more grinding Pearl Jam with an occasional electro backbeat, it finds Bazan discovering drums on First Drumkit – “I looked at my dad, he looked at me… he agreed to trade my clarinet for my first drum set” – and, in Teenage Sequencer, enjoying covert kissing by the school gym before volleyball (“turning me into a teenager”). The musical density doesn’t quite complement the elegiac lyrical flow, and a change of pace might have meant another way forwards, but there’s tenderness to spare. John Aizlewood ★★★ Havasu POLYVINYL/BIG SCARY MONSTERS. CD/DL/LP