When David Bazan took the stage at T.T. the Bear's last Tuesday, his audience had been more than patient. Two overly long sets from two underwhelming openers had already dragged the evening way past the posted set times, fueling the suspense for the congregation of Bazan fans. The show had sold out a few days earlier, and the mass of Bazan devotees had filled the venue hours before his set was to begin. With the release of Curse Your Branches last month, his first full-length solo release since the break-up of his band Pedro the Lion in 2004, Bazan's devout flock of followers was finally given an LP to accompany his rebirth as a solo act. Pedro the Lion, which almost never had the same lineup through its 10-year run, was always a vehicle for Bazan as a singer-songwriter, and the current tour is the first he's done with a full backing band in years.

Curse Your Branches reveals a Bazan maturing musically with fresh instrumentation and approaches never before used in any of his recordings. Lyrically, Bazan's struggles with faith and alcoholism along with his new role as a loving father have given him plenty of material to work with. His compositions are as engrossing as ever, and Curse Your Branches is the best album he's released in years.

But then again, Bazan's never been afraid of inserting himself into his music. From his earliest recordings under the Pedro the Lion moniker to this newest release, Bazan's personal struggles have always provided a compelling autobiographical thread for his fans to follow. Pedro the Lion was often mislabeled as "Christian rock," and while biblical themes and imagery were an important lyrical foundation, it was Bazan's complex relationship to his faith-his constant questioning and spiritual vacillation-that made his music so gripping. It makes sense that in every one of his performances, Bazan includes brief question-and-answer sessions for his fans to connect to him in an even more direct way.

But beyond all these sanctimonious interpretations, when Bazan and his band finally started playing last Tuesday, they did something a little more basic: They kicked ass for over 90 minutes. The set included every song from the new album, most of the superb, if rather jaded, Fewer Moving Parts EP from 2006, and a smattering of about four Pedro the Lion songs including a haunting encore of "Priests and Paramedics" from 2002's Control.

Bazan's backing band included two members from the repetitive opener, Say Hi (formerly Say Hi to Your Mom) and two other musicians from his posse of Seattle collaborators. The standout here was lead guitarist Blake Westcott, a hulking grizzly bear of a man with a mesmerizing multi-colored beard that shamed the facial hair sported by pretty much every other male in the room. Westcott nailed every song, playing complex lead licks with eerie echo and e-bow effects, giving a certain space-country twang to the lush sounds generated by the rest of the band.

As for Bazan, who usually plays all the instruments on his recordings, he was rocking the bass and nailing the funky lines while leading the rest of the group. His vocals, the vital centerpiece of any Bazan effort, were perfectly on point. Even on the higher notes, like in the verse for the standout track on the new album, "Bless this Mess," his voice's breaking strains and reaches sounded great.

Following well over an hour of huge sounds from the entire ensemble, Bazan came back for a short solo encore. Here, his hushed, prayer-like singing over the slight picked guitar connected the entire audience from the longest standing diehards to those new fans for whom Curse Your Branches is their first exposure. For them, this glimpse of a rejuvenated Bazan playing an awe-inspiring set to a sold-out crowd was probably something of a revelation. For us fervent Bazan fans, seeing him in this high form was nothing short of religious.