Josh T. Pearson was the leader of the Texan band Lift to Experience, who, back in the early 2000s, received huge critical acclaim and little commercial success. Lift made only one album before falling apart when the bassist’s wife died of a heroin overdose.
Pearson repaired to a tiny town in Texas, where, by his own account, he went mad. Suffering a loss of faith after questioning the wisdom of his preacher father’s refusal to pay child support, Pearson remained in his house, alone, for weeks on end, before getting a job as a janitor in a church.
Eventually, he emerged from his hermitage and moved around America until settling in Berlin to be with a girl. The relationship fell apart, and on the evidence of this album the heartache hit him pretty badly. Recorded over two nights in a Berlin studio, Last of the Country Gentlemen is an unguarded, honest outpouring of grief, couched in simple guitar lines and the occasional string part.
Pearson has an incredibly moving voice. He could be singing about changes to the flat-rate VAT scheme and you would find yourself welling up. But when this voice is allied to tales of a life falling apart, only the hardest of hearts could fail to be moved. Pearson infuses the songs with a strong dose of self-hatred and makes no attempt to cover up his character failings. In Woman, When I’ve Raised Hell he warns his girlfriend not to “make me rule this home with the back of my hand” before suggesting the best thing for her to do is leave him free to sit in a corner and drink himself into a stupor, just in case she’s wondering what kind of a day he’s had.
After listening to this, few would argue with Pearson when he sings Sweetheart I Ain’t Your Christ. Over 12 minutes of mournful country guitar, he warns of “trying to teach my tongue to talk because you think it’ll cure some curse”. It’s not just an admission of imperfection; it’s also addressing a loss of faith. Pearson’s father, who let his family go hungry because he believed he could “will” basic needs into existence and talked in tongues. The song is the sound of a man grappling with the most fundamental aspects of life’s purpose.
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There are flashes of dry humour on Last of the Country Gentlemen. The cover photograph features Pearson looking desperate as he clutches a beautiful, bare-breasted woman at the waist, and on Honeymoon is Great, Wish You Were Her he admits falling in love with one woman and marrying another. But mostly this is an album about sadness. It uses direct language that is free of metaphor, but poetic and elegant nonetheless.
It’s a beautiful piece of writing set to music, flawless in its way.
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