Pitchfork

On the cover of David Bazan's Fewer Moving Parts EP, the singer-songwriter is rendered in a graphic novel-style illustration by Zak Sally, Low's former bass player. Bearded, axe slung over his shoulder, and foregrounding a clear-cut field of nubby stumps, Bazan appears, significantly, alone. This is, after all, his first release under his own name since retiring Pedro the Lion. Equally fitting-- and appropriately heavy handed-- for the EP's content is the lumberjack imagery of felled trees. On Fewer Moving Parts, Bazan takes swings at some easy targets and aims to cut them down to size.

The thing is, Bazan's once-sharp songwriting has dulled considerably since 1998's understated but utterly endearing It's Hard to Find a Friend. Whether humorously skewering standards of beauty ("winter legs give me heart attacks") or nakedly hanging his bleeding heart out to dry on songs that addressed his Christian faith, Bazan's early work never buckled under the weight of its self-importance. It was just spare indie rock unafraid to admit to some serious heartache. But, after a few regrettable dalliances into concept records like Winners Never Quit and Control, Bazan eschewed any semblance of subtlety for clobbering listeners with a message. And in that department, Fewer Moving Parts leaves you pretty battered.

The opener, "Selling Advertising", is a snot-nosed swipe at record reviewers and anyone who works in the all-encompassing field of marketing. When Bazan drops phrases like "tracking trends" and "corralling demographics," it's a critique as pat and depthless as you'd find in three frames of Dilbert. As he ribs reviewers for inevitably focusing on his Christian faith, Bazan wanders into some avoid-at-all-costs lyrical territory, singing, "Am I a Christian? Are you a Jew?/ Did you kill my Lord? Must I forgive you?"

"Backwoods Nation", with its Neanderthal rock stops and starts, is similarly base in its criticism of the U.S. Bazan implores "all rednecks" to "pick up machine guns and kill camel fuckers." He also invites fratboys to swap their "cocaine and casual date raping/ For cabinet appointments and rose garden tapings." Bazan may be understandably incensed by the state of the nation, but this is some puerile fare. Even when Bazan turns his vitriol inward, as on "Fewer Broken Pieces", his self-deprecation is cloying. Sample lyric: "David Byrne on Bob Costas put it pretty well/ But I put it better/ I still run the show/ Don't you forget it." And while his tongue is planted firmly in his cheek, the joke is awfully thin.

Musically, Fewer Moving Parts doesn't represent much of a departure from his work as Pedro the Lion. As always, Bazan's melodies are better than average and his production tasteful. But none of this material sounds particularly inspired, which makes the decision to include an acoustic version of every song totally confounding. If the fully produced versions were more elaborate or truly different, the acoustic counterparts would make for an interesting glimpse into Bazan's creative process. But the skeletal compositions are so faithfully preserved in the fully produced versions that their inclusion is a real head-scratcher. Hopefully, Bazan is just hoarding his best material for his forthcoming full-length and Fewer Moving Parts is just a shaky first step into life after Pedro the Lion.