Josh T. Pearson

Watch The Video For Straight At Me

JOSH T. PEARSON has shared the video for ‘Straight At Me’.

“I’ve always dreamt of wrestling a redneck Cupid and I finally got my chance.”

Directed by Fidel Ruiz-Healy and Tyler Walker of the American Standard Film Co., the video is a love story following two characters from bar room to marriage – a “phantasmagoria of love” as seen through the lens of the Lone Star State’s history and TV stations…

Fidel Ruiz-Healy and Tyler Walker explain “With Straight At Me, we wanted to capture the humor and sardonic tone of Josh’s song and personality. We all came up with a video that would play out as a phantasmagoria of love across Texas history. We wanted to use the iconography of Texas to exploring how Texas and relationships both romanticize themselves. Filmed in Texas, we created a tale that showcased a life of love flashing before Josh’s character’s eyes after falling for the local bartender. We see them go from revolutionaries and cowboys to bank robbers and car dealers, to two-stepping in heaven after wrestling off cupid’s intervention, but ultimately ending up fat in bed watching their dreams pass them by on TV. As we saw it, a truly romantic love story.”

Last night Josh T. Pearson and band (featuring Lift To Experience drummer Andy Young) kicked off the UK leg of The Straight Hits! tour which finishes on 22 May with a performance at London’s Islington Assembly Hall before travelling over to Europe. Support is from Erika Wennerstrom (from Heartless Bastards) and the band have confirmed a series of festival performances in the summer, including Primavera Sound (1 June), Sea Change (24-25 Aug) and End of the Road (30 Aug-2 Sep), full details below.

JOSH T. PEARSON BAND LIVE

16 May – UK, Birmingham The Glee Club

18 May – IE, Dublin Whelans

19 May – UK, Glasgow Art School

20 May – UK, Manchester Gorilla

22 May – UK, London Islington Assembly Hall

24 May – FR, Paris La Maroquinerie

26 May – BE, Belgium Rotonde Botanique

27 May – NL, Amsterdam Bitterzoet

28 May – DE, Cologne Gebäude 9

29 May – DE, Hamburg Knust

30 May – DE, Berlin Quasimodo

1 June – ES, Barcelona Primavera Sound Festival

4 June – SE, Stockholm Kagelbanen

5 June – DK, Copenhagen DR Koncerthuset Studio 3

6 June – NO, Oslo Parkteatret

24-25 Aug – UK, Sea Change Festival

30 Aug-2 Sep – UK, End of the Road festival

Tickets details are available at – here

The Straight Hits! – out now on Mute – is the follow up to Pearson’s acclaimed debut, 2011’s Last Of The Country Gentlemen. The album began as a mere creative exercise – each song had to follow certain parameters, listed below as The Five Pillars – giving Pearson the freedom to write a lighter, more “straight” album.

“In the last years, I learned to dance, take drugs, make love… choose life.

I got rid of the beard, cut my hair and started wearing colour.”

The Straight Hits! features multiple different flavours of country, rock and all points in between, taking in blasts of country-punk (opener ‘Straight To The Top!’), cataclysmic rock’n’roll playing its romantic drama at high-stakes (‘Loved Straight To Hell’, which compresses the elemental power of Pearson’s previous band, Lift To Experience into five and a half minutes of symphonic turmoil); aching folksy mourn (‘Dire Straights Of Love’), and even a bona fide love song, the deliciously profound ache of ‘A Love Song (Set Me Straight)’.

Written in three days, the tracks were cut with similar no-nonsense focus, in three days with engineer Matt Pence (who made Mute’s 2017 reissue of The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads sound so vivid) at the controls, Lift To Experience drummer Andy Young once again manning the traps, and Daniel Creamer and Scott Lee Jr. of The Texas Gentlemen on keyboards and bass guitar. The recordings were then flown to the UK to be mixed by Ben Hillier.

Josh T. Pearson has freed himself from the mythology that has surrounded him since Lift To Experience’s implosion, his subsequent years in the wilderness travelling throughout Europe and beyond, and the release of his acclaimed debut album.

There’s new Josh T. Pearson music in the world, and it’s joyful, giddy life-affirming stuff.

Josh T. Pearson’s The Five Pillars:

1) All songs must have a verse, a chorus and a bridge.

2) The lyrics must run 16 lines or less.

3) They must have the word ‘straight’ in the title.

4) That title must be four words or less.

5) They must submit to song above all else. (“You do as she tells you, whatever the song tells you,” Pearson explains. “You bend to her, and not her to you.”).

Buy The Album here

Watch the animated video for ‘Straight To The Top!

Whiskey Straight Love’ (The Texas Gentlemen Sessions version)

‘Straight At Me’ (The Texas Gentlemen Sessions version)