Pedro the Lion Keeps Audience Guessing When It Will Attack

David Bazan wants you to understand: The no-frills indie rock he plays with his band Pedro the Lion is emphatically unpretentious, but it has a message or two, sometimes questioning his own Christian faith, or criticizing geo-politics.

So Bazan takes questions from the audience.

One fan at Pedro the Lion’s concert Saturday at the El Rey Theatre quickly shouted, “When are you going to rock?”

It was one of those half-serious, half-insulting jabs that are a long tradition in indie rock. But if Bazan was frequently content to allow his songs to unfold slowly, he also occasionally exploded late in his hourlong set with raw, Crazy Horse-like energy.

In the past, Bazan--who is the only recurring member of Pedro the Lion--has sometimes kept things quiet and purposely intimate. But Bazan and his three-piece band focused mostly on its newest album, “Control,” which contains a harder rock edge amid the usual challenging, and infinitely questioning, lyrics.

Among the songs that cut the deepest was the hopeful and morose “Indian Summer.”

The band also performed the quietly desperate “A Mind of Her Own,” a song taken from 2000’s “Winners Never Quit,” Bazan’s concept album about a politician whose corruption hastens the collapse of his world.

Bazan sang, “I wish I could have seen their faces when they heard the news/ Now that’s the sort of smack that leaves a bruise.” Quiet or loud, Bazan explores dark themes that are recognizable and understandable to anyone.