Pedro the Lion's discography
1. Options
Introduction
I first discovered David Bazan’s music when I was around 15 or 16. Modern Baseball and Foxing recorded a video of them covering Options together. A few members of Foxing are shirtless in the intro shot, the lead singer from The Hotelier, one of my favourites at the time, was also shirtless, sat on the floor and hugging a dog. The bands intro the song with different members, and then seamlessly swap in for the band members that will be doing the cover but wearing the same clothes as the first band members. If I didn’t explain that very well, here’s the link: Foxing ft Modern Baseball- Options (Pedro the Lion Cover) (Space Jam Sessions).
I immediately thought it was cool. But not in a Wayne’s World ‘We are not worthy’ kind of way, more like discovering a club that I didn’t know existed. Everyone in the video just seems like a total music nerd. Hair is greasy, glasses are thick-framed, jokes and laughs are goofy and unrestrained, people say awkward things that die upon contact with air. Even though I wanted to be in the room, I was that I would be too nervous to do much other than watch. And no way was I taking my shirt off. I met Brendan and Jake from Modern Baseball in 2014, about a month after this video was released, in a tiny venue in London that I always forget the name of and my Dad had to ask a group of older teens to say that me and my friend were with them so that we could get in, as we were under 18 and couldn’t actually enter the venue without an adult.
So the music nerds are done messing around and now the song starts and immediately it’s everything I’m into. Slow, single-picked notes based around power chords, it sounded like a doomer Front Bottoms song to me, or even just a Modern Baseball song slowed down. In fact, it sounded exactly like what a collaboration between Foxing and Modern Baseball would sound like (fun fact: I also discovered Death Cab for Cutie from a Modern Baseball cover with Petal that was posted on this channel, everyone’s got to start somewhere). I was definitely interested, I was already preparing to start looking up this new band on youtube, when they started singing the chorus (or whatever it is).
I could never divorce you
Without a good reason.
And though I may never have to
It’s good to have options.
And my mind was blown. What did they just sing? What kind of pop-punk-mid-2010s-emo-revival band was old enough to be singing about divorce? Maybe American Football were old enough but they were yet to reunite. I’m 15! Why are these emotions so resonant?
So I started searching and found the Control LP in full on youtube, listened to the first song and again, what? This song is amazing, and it’s so much better performed by the actual band, but everyone is making jokes about christian rock in the comments and I don’t understand. This is pop-punk, right? This band must have toured with Blink or at least played Warped Tour a few times, what’s going on with the references to church in the comments?
And so started my obsession with Pedro the Lion and the music of David Bazan. I would dip in and out of Control like an addict going in and out of rehab. The lyrics were intoxicatingly bleak, I couldn’t believe the depths of emotion shared on that first album I listened to, I would talk to anyone who wanted to listen about Bazan and Pedro and what I thought they were all about. And I’ve spoken about it all too much to friends and to my girlfriend, soon enough I’m going to realise that after a certain point it’s diminishing returns when I’ve said ‘but it’s sooo sad’ after 6 pints and no one finds my quirky or charming anymore. So I’m going to write what I think and feel about Bazan’s music here, and I’m going to try and write about at least every Pedro The Lion song that has been released. As I write this, big Dave is recording a second Overseas LP, so the discog may just grow too large to write something about every record this man has poured his soul into. I’m not going to write in any order particularly, just whatever I feel like writing about at the time. I always feel inspired when I listen to David Bazan’s music, so it’s time to do something with that inspiration.
1 - Options (Control LP. 2002)
Written 13/12/22
Since this is the song that introduced many people to Pedro the Lion, it only feels right to cover it first, even if it feels like it might be the most challenging song to write about.
A dum hit and what sounds like a harmonic from the bass ring out like a gavel calling order, a bell or a cleared throat, ‘pay attention’ it says, ‘I’m trying to break your heart’. The weaving guitar curls around the bass in a pattern I can never quite figure out when I’m listening to it, the drums are steady, assured, whereas the strings can’t quite catch up to each other. Never playing the same note, always a step away, but moving as if they are reaching out to each other. David sings about a fairly innocuous scene, walking on the beach with his partner, in a manner that I’ve never been able to match up with America. I’ve only ever pictured the Great British beach on a day towards the end of summer when listening to this song. That’s probably only because I’m English and not because there’s some kind of innate resonance between Bazan’s music and Britain - British beaches can just be quite depressing and so is this song.
The next line (I could never divorce you//without a good reason) is so emotive and horrifying that it melts me blunt. He’s saying exactly the thing that no one ever wants to say out loud, and he’s singing in a way that’s not exactly morose or angry, just accepting. He sings like he’s come to terms with it. Not that the sentiment means nothing to him, just that he's grown accustomed to that feeling. And that is heartbreaking. That’s what always felt so potent for me, and still does, and is why I think I’m able to relate to this song when the concept of divorce is quite foreign to me. The sentiment is this: now you know it, you have to live with this. Something bad might happen, something beyond my control, including my feelings changing, and I will have to do the right thing in that case, but I’m not happy about it. Options is about the transience of feeling, how we can be in love one day, and fall out the next, only to fall back in love three days later.
Though I may never have to,
It’s good to have options.
But for now,
I need you
While it might seem like Bazan is addressing this song to a particular person, perhaps his wife of the time, which doesn’t make the song any less emotional, he’s actually addressing these statements to us. “We were walking, holding hands” means Bazan and me, Bazan and you, Bazan and whoever is listening to this song. Now listen to him sing those lines again, like he is saying them to you.
I could never divorce you,
Without a good reason.
And though I may never have to,
It’s good to have options.
But for now,
I need you.
Now you’re in it, you’re a part of this song, a part of this album, you’ve been brought onto a close enough level for the rest of this album to not feel so jarringly personal. Things are going to be different on this album, these songs are going to affect you in strange ways, you are going to get to know this man, who you may never meet, on what feels like a very personal level. You have to work for this relationship too, you have to feel it. Remember when you and David Bazan were walking hand in hand with your bare feet in the sand? This feeling of closeness is brought to an unbelievable head with a video he recorded for the KDVS radio show in Philadelphia in 2009. David Bazan - Options - Phoning It In He actually sings into a phone to someone who is presumably a fan, like he’s having a conversation with them, catching up on old times. It’s so personal, it’s so real, it can’t be just something he wrote. This is a real feeling, relayed like a real memory, and you are being asked to experience it. How it does it feel? Imagine the shame it would feel to say it.
But of course, he doesn’t say it.
But it was only in my head,
Because no one ever says
What they really mean to say
When there’s so much at stake
This is just a thought. A guilty, shameful thought that squirrels around his head until it has to come out somehow. He agrees, this is too awful a thing to tell a person. Don’t worry old friend, i didnt’ really say all those horrible things to you, I must have misremembered, now I’ve got to go there’s another call on the line.
You feel your chest relax, and the rising guilt that so quickie began to boil returns to a simmer. Now you really have to live with this feeling - you’re too scared to verbalise it. We all are. How terrible.
Bazan is known for his ultra-real and personal lyrics, on some songs so unbelievably soul-bearing I can hardly believe it’s real (Wish My Kids Were Here - Dark Sacred Night by David Bazan 2016). It’s something that has inspired all those who feel taken under his proverbial wing, especially Julien Baker:
I’m always thinking about David Bazan. Like I was just a huge Pedro the Lion fan. And man, I remember there’s this one song; it’s like a fairly popular song of theirs, but it’s called “Options,” and there’s this lyric, “so I told her I loved her and she told me she loved me / and I mostly believed her and she mostly believed me.” And it’s like, man, that was the first time that I had heard a song about love that wasn’t either pining dramatically over a breakup, or soaring with starry-eyed infatuation. It was this song that is a story about the ways in which people actually love each other, and the ways we actually treat the people that we claim to love. And that whole record is, and I mean, David Bazan one of the most self-aware songwriters that I know. And I remember that song making such an impression on me because finally someone had the guts to say what was really going on instead of being like, “Oh, I love you so much.” Or “we were supposed to be together forever and now you’re gone.” It felt so heavy to me in a good way.
(https://entertainmentvoice.com/2021/04/05/julien-baker-on-little-oblivions-i-just-wanted-to-tell-people-how-wretched-i-thought-i-was/ 2021, Todd Gilchrist)
While ‘it felt so heavy to me in a good way’ might not be my favourite way that Bazan has been described, she does verbalise the almost intangible feeling that this song conveys. The final quartet of the song is probably the most emotive as it feels the most real. This is how feelings really work, everyone is unsure of things, it’s hard to feel loved and it’s hard to make someone feel that way. And Bazan is going to spend the rest of the album detailing in some of the most arresting and provocative alternative rock you may ever hear.
What a way to start an album.