Josh T. Pearson
Last Of The Country Gentlemen

It is always difficult to describe a singer-songwriter. Josh T. Pearson, like few others, simply has the Gift.

The review could end here, because when talking about a singer-songwriter, it is the Light that their art emits that constitutes the only determinant that can define its value.

American, Texan to the marrow, son of a preacher, a preacher himself for a while, Josh T. Pearson seems to come from another era, transcending the walls that perimeter his domestic universe, the walls that delimit his inner world, to narrate and spread his Good News. A work that took years, this debut of his in 2011, a work aimed at calibrating the essence, even before the form, of the songs that were finally miraculously captured in the recording sessions of this phenomenal “Last of the Country Gentlemen”, among the best examples the genre can offer in recent years.

A titanic undertaking, so much so that the author himself will emerge destroyed, due to the unspeakable effort that a "home" artist like him had to face to pour years of inner turmoil into the infamous "disc" to offer to the music market. An endeavor that, however, manages to more than worthily crown a journey of research that begins when our artist declares the experience with his Lift To Experience concluded, files away his electric past, and decides to seclude himself in his country home, in the company of his acoustic guitar alone. His tormented fingerpicking feels the weight of years of work, where the strings seem to have vibrated incessantly until the right harmony was reached, spanning the dusty, desolate, and arid plains of Texas (it is impressive to think that from this frame emerges such a fresh and regenerating source, so much that one suspects – and I'm sure the author himself would agree – that there is a touch of the Divine, and you cannot understand how much such an assertion can weigh on me).

What amazes, more than anything else, is the structure of the compositions, which often, drifting on the wave of a free and inspired songwriting, exceed ten minutes in duration, something unusual considering the genre. Something understandable instead if thinking about our man's writing method, who first shaped the music in a regime of total expressive freedom, let it flow, roam for miles and miles, and then adapted the rare intensity of the lyrics on top. Compositions imposing and fragile at the same time, like majestic sandcastles scattered in the desert's nothing, demanding respect for their magnitude, as well as for their beauty.

A music that evolves without haste, with phrases succeeding each other freely in a kind of creative ecstasy aimed at capturing the vibration of a string and its perfect harmonization with a word or a phrase: an art aimed at mastering with miraculous delicacy, though not without difficulty, an incandescent emotional matter. And in this, Pearson is truly a gentleman: evidently, in his pure, spontaneous, instinctual conception of artistic genesis, the author doesn't seem interested in structuring his emotions within the temporally narrow limits of a song. As if before an artistic creation process, one is talking about infinite sessions of an anxious therapeutic and purifying journey.

Even though, it must be said, Pearson does quite well in the "small," and not coincidentally, we find, in my opinion, the most intense moments of the work precisely in the opening and closing tracks, barely three minutes each.

"Thou Art Loosed” opens ascetically, contrasting the bustling of a guitar reminiscent of the most tormented Cohen and a celestial voice not devoid of an epic tension that will explode in a breathtaking climax (“I'm Off to Save the World”) the chanting voice repeats in a dramatic intensification. “Driver Her Out”, on the other hand, is a soothing lullaby that closes the work, tempering the incredible tension accumulated throughout the album in the dim and momentary glow of a light (the Light) that leaves the listener with a reassuring sense of hope.

In between, between “Thou Art Loosed” and “Drive Her Out”, we find five songs more beautiful than the other, probably disorienting in their exhausting length, amidst a pause and an uncertainty, in their progression without anything (at least apparently) happening. But never as in this case, is it important to pay attention while listening and to grasp the nuances, to let oneself be lulled by a music that knows how to grow, knows how to become dramatic, sweet and desperate, then to calm down and start again in the hesitation of a painful journey, but not devoid of the mirage of a final redemption.

The closest comparison is the usual Drake of “Pink Moon”, even though the heavy throwback to American folk tradition is evident from the oversized beard Pearson wears under his chin. But it’s the usual Drake of “Pink Moon” the primary reference if one intends to understand Pearson’s aching and fragile songwriting. And the never intrusive, yet sweet, incursions by Warren Ellis' violin are of little help, certainly not essential to the economy of the sound, but indispensable for Pearson's own psychological resilience, perhaps reassured by the approval of the artist/friend he met on stage while supporting the Dirty Three. Perhaps in need of some understanding, probably invigorated by the extraordinary feeling that only a musician of Ellis' caliber can recreate in the sterile context of a recording studio.

"Last of the Country Gentlemen” is a miracle, and it might not be repeated (hard to imagine being able to duplicate such perfection and regenerate it again in the studio, at least in the same modalities, especially if considering a reserved and solitary artist like Pearson, for whom success and popularity will probably do more harm than good, as disturbing elements of an extremely fragile equilibrium more fortuitous than anything else). But when talking about singer-songwriters, it's wrong to seek new revelations, the name to pass down to posterity; when talking about singer-songwriters, it's enough to know how to grasp the Gift, the Light that they hold, and be irradiated by it, even for just an instant. One more moment.