Capping off a fruitful 12 year long solo career, singer/songwriter David Bazan reformed his legendary project Pedro The Lion with the release of Phoenix in 2019, its first new album in over a decade. Phoenix not only marked the project’s official comeback, it quietly introduced Bazan’s ambitious plan of recording 5 full-length albums devoted to each city he lived in throughout his youth. With Havasu, Bazan goes back to the seventh grade, where he and his family spent one year living in Lake Havasu City, AZ. The result is an open-hearted acknowledgment of shame and elation both, spaciously but delicately arranged in affirmation of the nurturing those feelings deserve—even if the kid in need of validation has long since grown up and moved away.