Control by Pedro The Lion

Control, Pedro the Lion's third full-length, came out on Jade Tree on April 16, 2002, and it's a concept album as bleak as a Seattle February. David Bazan, the band's driving force, tells the story of a businessman who cheats on his wife and ends up dead at her hands, and he tells it in the first-person narrative voice that became his trademark.

The music matches the story's slow-motion car crash: heavy, grinding guitars, deliberate tempos and Bazan's weary, conversational voice laying out sin, guilt and consequence without flinching. "Rapture" is the uneasy, simmering pick. It reached number 36 on the Top Independent Albums chart, and it sits between Progress and Achilles Heel in the catalog.

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