This month, former Lift to Experience musician Josh T Pearson releases his first album in a decade, a particularly harrowing slab of melodramatic blood and thunder. As ugly as it is beautiful, Last Of The Country Gentlemen’s acoustic rattle will appeal to fans of Bon Iver and Jeff Buckley. It’s an absorbing piece of work from start to finish, in which the singer tells introspective tales of lost love and a loss of faith.
Opening with the aching ‘Thou Art Loosed’, Pearson gives us a brief respite from the oncoming blackness as he croons “I’m off to save the world”, before crushing our optimism with the bleak and bruised ‘Sorry With A Song’ and the epic 13 minutes of ‘Honeymoon’s Great: Wish You Were Her’. However, while his cracked, emotive vocals elevate the likes of ‘Sweetheart I Ain’t Your Christ’ and the patience-testing ten minutes of ‘Country Dumb’ from being self-indulgent torch songs, it’s actually the stirring addition of strings to pepper his performances that truly make Last Of The Country Gentlemen something special. Admittedly the dark subject matter and the battered delivery mightn’t be everyone’s cup of whiskey, but for those of you who like listening to tortured tunesmiths, you’ll find none blacker than Josh T Pearson.