Pedro the Lion emerged from Seattle in the mid ’90s with a series of conceptual albums featuring their first-person, pared-back style of indie rock. Joined by an ever-shifting lineup of instrumentalists, the project is driven by the musings of singer-songwriter David Bazan, whose lyrics contemplate his Christian upbringing and the US political landscape. Disbanding in 2004, the project was revived in 2019 with a Tiny Desk Concert, and the release of Phoenix – the first of five albums dedicated to the cities where Bazan grew up.

Posted by DICE

Pedro the Lion

Support: Lakes

Pedro The Lion with band - first Berlin show in a long time

In 2019, after a 15-year break filled with solo records and side-projects, David Bazan returned to the moniker under which he had become one of indie rock’s most identifiable voices and incisive songwriters, Pedro the Lion. He sort of stumbled into 2019’s Phoenix, a charged chronicle of his childhood there, while spending the night with his grandparents during a tour stop. But he soon understood that unpacking his peripatetic youth, where his music minister father shifted around the country like a Marine moving bases, was helpful, healing, and maybe even interesting. Havasu followed in 2022. Bazan was onto something, untangling all the ways his past had both shaped and misshaped his present inside some of his best songs ever.

That past truly begins to become the present on Santa Cruz, the most fraught and frank album yet in a planned five-album arc; this one covers a little less than a decade, from just after he turned 13 until he turns toward adulthood around 21. These songs ripple with the anxiety and energy of teenage awakening—of hearing rock ’n’ roll, of understanding that independent music exists, of making out with an older schoolmate in deepest secret, of falling in love, of finally starting to understand that in order to be yourself you’re going to need to be something other than your parents’ vision of you. It is the rawest, most affecting and affirming album Pedro the Lion has ever made.

This is an 16+ event

Pedro The Lion

Pedro The Lion - Modesto

Pedro the Lion - Modesto

Gigs

Berlin

Kantine am Berghain

Super! présente

Pedro the Lion en concert exceptionnel le 15 septembre 2024 à Petit Bain !

Première partie : Lakes

Early into Santa Cruz, le troisième album poignant des mémoires musicales de David Bazan sur sa vie parfois peu banale, il découvre les Beatles. Il est le nouveau venu d'Arizona dans une nouvelle école de la célèbre ville côtière californienne où son père a accepté un autre poste dans un collège biblique. Lui et son premier ami, Matt, sont assis sur le tapis de la petite chambre de Matt, feuilletant les disques légués par son père, lorsque Bazan aperçoit une pochette familière - l'Album Blanc, connu uniquement grâce à un documentaire de l'église qui mettait en garde les enfants contre les secrets sataniques de « Revolution 9 ». La propagande disait que si l'on jouait l'album à l'envers, il offrirait un ordre : « Allume-moi, homme mort ».

Alors, bien sûr, les enfants l'ont joué à l'envers et ont été fascinés par le son, par l'imagination, par l'acte de créativité consacrée loin du rock chrétien. Bazan avait 13 ans. « Treading water on the open ocean/Then you thrown me out a life ring », chante-t-il, le sourire visible à travers le son alors que le rythme s'accélère comme une pulsation, plus de trois décennies plus tard. "Tout ce dont j'avais besoin, c'était d'un peu d'aide de la part d'un ami. C'est à ce moment-là que, à bien des égards, les remarquables chansons de Pedro the Lion commencent à prendre forme.

Cet événement est réservé aux personnes de plus de 16 ans.

Super!

Pedro the Lion + Lakes

Lakes

Paris

Petit Bain

This is a 14+ event (under 16s must be accompanied by an adult)

Communion ONE

London

The Garage

Early into Santa Cruz, the poignant third album in David Bazan’s ongoing musical memoir of his sometimes-uncanny life, he discovers the Beatles. He is the new kid from Arizona in a new school in the famous California coastal town where his dad has accepted another post at a Bible college. He and his first friend there, Matt, are sitting on the carpet in Matt’s little bedroom, flipping through the records bequeathed by his father, when Bazan spots a familiar cover—The White Album, known only from a church documentary that warned children of the Satanic secrets of “Revolution 9.” Play it backwards, the propaganda said, and it would offer a command: “Turn me on, dead man.”

So, of course, the kids played it forward and were fascinated by the sound, by the imagination, by the act of consecrated creativity far outside of Christian rock. Bazan was 13. “Treading water on the open ocean/Then you threw me out a life ring,” he sings, the smile obvious just through the sound as the beat picks up like a racing pulse, more than three decades later. “All I needed was a little help from a friend.” That is the moment where, in many ways, the remarkable songs of Pedro the Lion begin to take shape.

This is a 14+ event

Leeds

Brudenell Social Club

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Pedro the Lion

About Pedro the Lion

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