Blanco
, the third solo album from indie rock wayfarer
David Bazan
, finds the singer working from home in a mindset of deep personal introspection. Comprised of tracks from his Bazan Monthly 7" series that he and collaborator
Yuuki Matthews
launched in 2014, the intimate home-recorded affair is a largely guitar-less pastiche of experimental synth pop and programmed beats that mostly recall his 2005 side project
Headphones
. Rather than the ragged-voiced, six-string troubadour logging miles on the D.I.Y. house concert circuit, this is the ragged-voiced basement pop experimentalist trying his hand at a new format while the family sleeps upstairs. While
Bazan
has never been one to shy away from difficult self-examination, his concerns here feel more provincial, revolving around family life and approaching middle age rather than the religion or politics that populated much of his work with
Pedro the Lion
. But, if his tools are now synthetic ones, he still presents a very raw, human edge on tracks like "Kept Secrets" and "Someone Else's Bet," with their blown-out drums and woozy synth lines. Aesthetically, there is little in the way of soft-synth EDM ambience, and some of the more new wave-inspired tracks like "Oblivion" and "With You" almost veer into early
Magnetic Fields
territory, albeit without
Stephin Merritt
's droll wit. But droll wit is not
's bailiwick, and overall it's nice to hear him put down the guitar and insert himself into less familiar environs. ~ Timothy Monger