Pedro The Lion

In the organizer's words:

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. The gripping 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.