David Bazan

Answers used to come easier for Bazan when he was a devout Christian, but that's no longer the case. Pedro the Lion had been seen by many as a "Christian band" — which created much polarization within the indie ranks — because a good number of its songs were parables or morality tales of sorts, and faith was always a strong element of the lyrics. It was an unfair tag, though, since Bazan was questioning or subverting essential beliefs and skewering the self-righteous, arrogant and judgmental far more often than suggesting what path people should choose. Now he's all but abandoned that faith, still conflicted about what he believes deep down and trying to determine if, at his core, he is truly good.

"Before, I would just say 'no,' because everyone is depraved," he confides. "But I reject that now. It's just something I've started to think about more in the wake of my old system of belief coming apart. You were never allowed to think of yourself that way, because you could never escape the status of being a depraved sinner. The only way that you could be seen as acceptable in God's eyes was through Jesus's perfect life and atonement for sins. But now it's just a pragmatic concern. Am I fucking up? Obviously, yes, a little bit. But I want to be a good man. I want to be because I have a daughter and a wife, and I want to do right by them."

He also wants to do right by his audience. "That whole 'Am I a good man?' — it's also 'Am I a good performer?'" he muses. "Part of these last two years of being solo has been trying to take responsibility for those times on stage and just say to myself, like, 'Are you happy with this? If not, why not? And what can you do to make it better?' So I've been working really hard from a lot of different angles, just trying to get better, to where I just feel good about it, to where I feel this is as good as I can possibly do it. I have a long way to go, but it's starting to feel like I'm better than I was. Before, I was less good at it. I mean, I could sing and play. I remember shows that were good; it didn't always suck. I just didn't know what it was to dig deep on some level, and I'm still learning that. It's a weird thing to say out loud and talk about, but I've been really lunging for it now."

As he edges forward on his own, Bazan's not ignoring the past; his sets are still peppered with plenty of Pedro favorites. Perhaps not some of that band's earliest tunes, though, ones where he feels — as he suggests in that new untitled piece — he was perhaps proselytizing a bit too much.

"I feel they're all honest expressions from certain periods, so I'm able to cringe a little less than maybe I used to that they exist," he says with a laugh. "But it's a whole 'nother thing to perform certain songs that I just don't like. You really have to believe in the material you're presenting for it to work. I'm not gonna pull out some old tune and get halfway through it and realize, 'God, this song sucks — I should not be playing this right now.'"

Ultimately, Bazan says he's finding comfort in breaking life — and, in the process, his music — down to its simplest, most important components, and giving himself a break along the way.

"It's just one foot in front of the other," he concludes. "I'm just trying to make a cool record, and I'm trying to understand myself better, and I'm trying to be a good man. That's pretty much what it all boils down to."