Curse Your Branches by David Bazan

Curse Your Branches was David Bazan's first full-length album under his own name, released by Barsuk Records on September 1, 2009, after years of fronting Pedro the Lion. He made most of it by himself in his basement studio near Seattle, working from early 2008 into the middle of 2009, and then handed it to his old Pedro bandmate T. W. Walsh, who did extra recording plus the mixing and mastering at his own studio in Massachusetts.

The homemade origins show in the best way: the songs are close and unvarnished, with Bazan's low, weary voice sitting right up front. On release day he also put out a single of Bob Dylan's "The Man in Me" backed with Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". The album debuted at number one on the Heatseekers chart and at 116 on the Billboard 200, and Metacritic logged an 82 from 19 reviews. "Please Baby Please" is the track that made a countdown.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.