4 out of 5

Everyone: David Bazan is sort of a boring guy.  Some of us – myself included – have, on occasion, found his particular breed of boredom entertaining when it’s funneled through slowcore, average-dude rock, with its themes set on life’s minor triumphs and minor setbacks, and how the latter can seem so much greater than that.  And he built a little humble rocker following around his Pedro the Lion act, and scuzzy-bearded / shaggy-haired folk had another troubadour to adore.  Oh, and also, there was Jesus.  There was Jesus and there was Bazan, on the Christian Tooth-and-Nail label (fine, only for one release…), and although he took the open-ended questioning route that made the material palatable to those maybe not down with the dogma, for some of us – myself included – the association prevented us from ever really putting Pedro on our playlist.

And then he went solo, or the kind of solo where the songs sound very much the same, and your old band mates make appearances, but we’ll suppose there are plenty of other reasons to justify the change.  Now, there had been shifts in the Pedro camp leading up to this, with some press regarding swear words and discussion of sex and other non-Christian things, and the confluence of all this made Fewer Moving Parts seem like a significant deal, although in reality it was just the next link in a musical chain.

Bazan: Still a boring dude, but still writing some great, slow-core rock, and the narrowed scope of this EP (being only five songs) feels like it automatically sheds one of my issues with his material: that it’s fairly limited overall, both in style and content.  (Although we could harp on how the EP repeats its tracks as acoustic versions as a very literal example in support of that criticism, but those can maybe be considered “bonus” tracks, and I have a separate opinion on their inclusion, so I wont factor them into the rating.  OKAY?  Stand down, Pedro fans.)  So the scope of I’m-no-good, I’m-lonely musings and socio-political snarkings comes across as broad enough, and though Bazan may only have a few topics, he is undeniably skilled at writing up creatively thoughtful or humorous verses regarding the same; the five tracks on Fewer Moving frequently had me smiling and, thanks to an also-consistent knack with a hook, tapping my toes.

The alternative acoustic takes on the tracks are, most certainly, separate affairs, with different paces and moods, clearly noted by giving the takes alternate titles as well.  But I almost wish these tracks hadn’t been included, as it sets up a weird choose-your-own-adventure conundrum: Some of the acoustic versions are better, some of the plugged in ones are.  Great! you think, except that it casts a weird light on things, disrupting, in my head, the core state of the song.  Like Bazan hadn’t fully realized how he wanted it to sound, so he just offered it up both ways.  Blanking this out and just focusing on one version or another makes those takes stronger, but maybe there’s even a five-stat version of this that combined the two.

But, as paranthetically mentioned, that’s an outside observation.  More directly concerning the rating, Fewer Moving Parts covers the angry, sad, funny, rocking and slow dimensions of Pedro, distilled down to a bite-sized package.  If it seems slightly unconvincing as a whole, that’s because this was a stop-gap EP, not conceived as its own project, and thus features some previous PtL songs.  But: Let that not dissuade the curious:  This is an excellent jumping on point.  Despite all my nay-saying above, this is what opened me up to Bazan’s god-granted gifts.  And, of course, for the built-in fanbase, need I have done any convincing anyway?