#325 (of 365) "Never Leave a Job Half Done" Pedro the Lion

Pedro the Lion is the creation of singer/songwriter David Bazan and for a time there in the early 2000s, I listened to a lot of their music. It's Hard to Find a Friend, The Only Reason I Feel Secure, the Whole EP, and their seminal 2000 album Winners Never Quit. Bazan writes in metaphors and ellipses and sings in deep bass, with guitar flourishes of brilliance quite frequently. At some point, Bazan had a crisis of faith and his heart-on-its sleeve religiously-themed music gave way to solo records where he explored his loss of belief, which I found fascinating, as someone who went on a similar path in his own life. That was some twenty years ago, and I haven't really looked back in over a decade (at any kind of belief in a higher being, or religion in general) but for a time I was questioning (and struggling) and for a time I was angry at Catholicism, in particular, for my inability to come out of the closet for too long in my life, but now, like Bazan's beautiful music, it all feels like a time capsule from a previous life, a life that wasn't even mine, maybe.

I took a lot at some of his more beautiful, definitely religiously-themed tracks that I once enjoyed immensely, like "Hymn" or "Secret of the Easy Yoke" but alas, only two tracks from his catalog made this countdown. This one is about cleaning up after a murder of your wife, at least on the surface, and is the first song I'd ever heard from Pedro the Lion. The lyrics, like all of Bazan's work, are brilliant.

Blood stains on the carpet. Blood stains on my hands. 
Drag her toward the kitchen. Hide the evidence
Oh the toil a lie can bring
That quitters never know
But lies can be the perfect things
If they never show
The crisis posed a question,  Just beneath the skin
The virtue in my veins reply, 
​That quitters never win
She almost ruined everything

"Never Leave a Job Half Done" - Pedro the Lion // Winners Never Quit (2000)