I can’t quite believe we don’t already have a thread for this man and this band, especially considering my continuing love affair with the music. I should have done this a long time ago, but time has a way of making things topical again… often unexpectedly, or in unexpected ways.
To kick off, here’s my review of their two CD masterpiece, The Texas/Jerusalem Crossroads from the Classic Albums of the Noughties so far… thread:
To all you haircut bands doing headstands/thinking you’ll turn he world upside down/put your guitars up over your shoulder/a new Sword of the Experience is taking over/because we’re simply the best damn band in the whole damned land/and Texas is the reason… the city is ours for the taking…
I find it impossible to listen to this record without crying my eyes out. I’m listening to it now, because I’ve decided that in order to write about any of these albums I have to be listening as I type. Anything else would be sacrilegious.
The last time I listened to this…
Oh God, now there’s a story. You see, this is no ordinary album, written by no ordinary person. Josh Pearson is a cowboy, which instantly places his triumphs and tragedies above those of ordinary men and women. He used to work on a ranch in Texas and he communed with the Lord through his guitar. He’s a lot like King David in that respect. He wears t-shirts that say, “My State is Bigger than your Country.”
Josh’s spiritual life is characterised by bereavement, in many ways similar to Nick Cave: his father was an itinerant preacher who was absent for long stretches of his life. When he was nineteen years old the presence of God – something he’d felt close and intimate and personal throughout his whole life – suddenly deserted him. He could only attain this connection again through singing and playing with the band. He was just a stupid ranch hand in a Texas rock band/trying to understand God's master plan
We sing these songs because we have to, not because we want to
It became his reason for being. He developed a guitar sound to match the enormous tones of a church organ (I’ve always loved the idea that in order to play music that comes close to being descriptive of the Majesty of the Lord you need an instrument the size of an entire Church wall). He was on a Mission from God. He found Andy (The Boy) Young and Josh (The Bear) Browning to play drums and bass respectively and share in his unhinged vision…
The Lord said, “Son: tell the World before it explodes the Glory of the Texas Jerusalem Crossroads.”
I said, “Lord I’ll make you a deal. I will if you give me smash hit so I can build a City on a Hill.”
And He said, “Son I will if you will.”
… I said, “My Sweet Lord… it’s a deal.”
You see, we’re living in the End Times. Revelation is Now. Any minute thousands of the faithful will start disappearing in the Rapture. Texas is the New Jerusalem: indeed the USA is the centre of Jerusalem. And there’s one lone rock and roll band on the side of the Lord in these times of Judgement, one band that can stand against the tides of darkness and corruption and bring the world back to the light. That band is Lift to Experience, and this album is the double concept album masterpiece telling the tale in all its broken glory.
Lift to Experience saved the world, but you were probably too lost in your own filthy sin to realise.
If you make it over the Jordan, you still have to make it through the night/And if you reach the Holy City, it won't be without a fight
That the execution is up to the task of supporting such a concept beggars belief. This album sounds like one piece of music from start to finish. It’s immense, compared by some reviewers to Jeff Buckley fronting Godspeed. It drifts between maelstroms of sound to gentle passages, from referencing hymns to impassioned calls to arms. Its conviction is without question, pain and triumph in every chord.
Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory? For my Saviour will come and rescue me, and redeem this treasure at the bottom of the sea.
It’s about.., Jesus. It’s about the loss of your father and the loss of the presence of God. It’s about the religious experience. It’s about a preincarnate Jesus meeting Joshua on the road to Jericho and giving the battle plans to march around the city seven times. It’s about praying for the sun to stay in the sky for another twenty-four hours so that you can slaughter every last one of your enemies on the battlefield. It’s about hope and despair and insanity and grief and the awesome and terrible Lord of Hosts.
And eerily it can be read as a prophetic satire on the current state of the USA and how they figure in world politics.
These are the days marching toward us with vengeance in their eyes/These are the days racing toward us with blood on their teeth and lips… These are the days that must happen to you.
The last time I heard those lyrics the floodgates in me opened. I cried for about two hours, weeping uncontrollably. My Dad’s a prophet; I grew up with Charismatic Christianity and all the attendant weirdness and bizarre experiences and on-the-edge beliefs. This album could have been written about me. I wanted to write music like this for years. Dad moved to America, my parents broke up last year – listening to this tore all the pent up grief out of my chest and broke through to me where nothing else could.
I needed to cry those tears. This album found them within me. And when you hear how the album ends you’ll be in tears too.
Flyboy once posted to this board that if I were any band I’d be Lift to Experience. It’s always been one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received.
Just as was told, justice will unfold/Just as was told, justice will unfold/Just as was told, justice will unfold/The truth be told, it will unfold
Josh Pearson lives in a nowhere town in Texas now. I think he cleans toilets for a living. He had a massive crisis of confidence and sacked the other two band members. These days he doesn’t believe that what he accomplished has affected anyone. He doesn’t communicate with the outside world. He’s recorded a demo of songs that are supposed to be as good as anything on this album, but he’s terrified of playing them to anyone or seeing them released.
I’ve got a contact email address for someone associated with him. I want to be his drummer.
I’d write to him if I thought he’d believe me.
We shall be free/we shall be free/we shall be free/we shall be free/we shall be free…
Rise again, Josh.
Well, he sure rose again.
I met a man called Josh T Pearson today. He’d just come off stage from a solo set in support of The Archie Bronson Outfit at the Barfly in Camden, all unkempt and sweaty hair under his cowboy hat and one of the wildest beards you’re likely to see. In so many great Westerns there’s the shaving scene, symbolic of the lone outsider striding out of the lawless badlands and forming a brief and often volatile alliance with the townsfolk. This evening Josh bought the wilderness with him.
Enough of the mythologizing. My first experience of Pearson in the flesh was exactly that: one man and his acoustic guitar, sitting on a stool not one metre away from me as I was sandwiched between photographers ecstatic to have to opportunity. He was funny and an excellent showman, heartfelt and bruised, and it all served to remind me just exactly how grounded in blues his music can be. As I type I’m listening to his cover of I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry that I bought for a fiver on CDr, reminding myself of the way he introduced the second song, “Sorry to go all country on you… well, there’s no money in art rock.”
No Lift… material tonight. Instead we got a taster of his new songs and a few from the aforementioned unreleased Angels Vs Devils, some inspired lyrics about being wary of committing your father’s sins, and a rabble rousing singalong that The devil is on the run… so let’s have some fun. He apologised several times for his absence, provoking a heartfelt heckle of “It’s good to have you back, Josh!” that somehow seemed more like saying hello to an old friend than celebrating the return of someone stumbling, faltering and hollering on the edge of becoming a one-man myth (and all the more appropriate for it).
Truth be told, I was a man on a mission this evening. And it’s perhaps not the one you’re expecting… I felt no real trace of the gushing fanboy tonight. I know it’s unlike me, but I was there on business.
You see, I’m introducing my Dad to Pearson. While the old man couldn’t be there tonight, I had a couple of things to ask the cowboy. Dad’s in the process of putting on a Church event in California next year on the theme of Prophets in the Wilderness. I’ve heard his teaching on the subject and it’s brilliant stuff, the kind of compassionate mysticism he excels at. When Dad puts on events it’s not your usual worship, teaching and ministry forum: he’s been known to stage plays, hire string quartets, have comedy nights or run evenings that send-up all the church clichés… and this time round the old man may even be thinking of booking this here cowboy of an evening.
So I ran the idea past him and got his email address. He sounded cautiously interested. He needs to check out Dad’s theology for compatibility, and wanted to know if he had any problems with cuss words (heh… you should see Dad when he’s watching the footie, or see where he grew up). The door had to be pushed. I have no idea what may come of it, if anything. But then, before Flyboy’s PM this Tuesday I had no idea that Josh had resurfaced at all, let alone that I’d be chatting to him by the end of the week. You never know what may happen… he says he’s back in England in November in support of Dirty Three, so us boys at Hunting Lodge may even try to book him if the dates coincide.
When I was a Christian Lift… was the band that I wanted to form so badly, I had it all planned out, I just couldn’t find the manpower. It was the band I’d waited my life for. I’m gutted I never got to see them, but that was my own stupid fault. Time to start making right on stuff like that, especially now that I’m no longer just the distanced and passive consumer of this holy fire we call music.
And in case you were wondering where the Texas ranch man stands… “I didn’t vote for him… |
