Josh T. Pearson - Lift To Experience - An unwitting Messiah

Hi Josh, thanks for your time. This is our second interview: the first was for your solo album, when you had that huge beard, and long hair too. I got the impression everyone saw a new Messiah in you. Then, after a while, you cut your hair pretty drastically. In the Hollywood cliché, that's usually the moment a man finds a new balance in his life, a place in society or something like that. Was it a particular moment for you?

The moment for me was a couple of years ago, when a guy with a very well-groomed beard came up to me in a bar in Austin and suggested a beard moisturizer that he made himself. That's when I realized the beard trend had finally flipped, and the dream was over. All my symbols had been hijacked. They'd taken on new forms. It was time to shave.

We're now celebrating your debut with Lift To Experience, an anomalous, staggering record in every sense. Something your old fans probably already loved for a long time. I'm one of them, but I also really enjoyed hearing it with a proper mix. How did this reissue come about?

For a bunch of very complicated reasons we weren't at the original mixing session, and it always bugged us. We were a pretty punk, gut-wrenching sonic assault, and the old mix sounded calm, safe. We were neither of those things. Bella Union told us they couldn't afford to let us mix it in Texas back in 2001, but they could do it at their studio in London in a week or two and get it out. So we went with that. The mix also got sped up, the strangest thing, but from the first moment we heard Simon's original mix, we wanted to redo it. But that was never really an option, because Bella Union swore they'd lost the tapes. Then a copy of a copy of a copy turned up on an ADAT through a friend of a friend. It took a few more years after that to get into a position to actually do it, so when Mute offered, we couldn't say no.

There's a palpable subversive charge in “The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads”, in terms of musical style first of all. You've also said, more or less ironically, that Lift To Experience is something that never existed in music before. What was your musical background at the time? I don't think there are many other albums that have been compared to so many different genres.

We wanted to musically blend My Bloody Valentine with the individual instrumental personality of a Jimi Hendrix-style trio, but adding a narrative on top. “Loveless” really changed the landscape of guitar music when it came out, the notes between the notes, constantly bending chords. It was like a new art form. Painting with a guitar. Electric impressionism. Especially for kids from Texas who hadn't heard all that music yet. This was before the internet, mind you, so sounds still had something sacred about them. I read an interview with Kevin Shields where he said he never let go of the tremolo effect. I thought that sounded pretty great. Sonic Youth, Spiritualized. That was great songwriting. People always talk about the boundaries they were pushing, which is true. But ultimately, beyond that, they were deeply romantic bands, with a great sense of melody. I just thought you could do more on the storytelling side. I figured that if you could reach that same psychedelic state of mind sonically, melodically, and so on, and then add a subtext to it, stretched out over time, it would be a completely different experience.

Most good electric music is immediate. It hits you in the gut and comes out the other end. I wanted to do that and then push further, so you could build chords and forms the way you'd build narrative arcs, stories within a story, a rock opera that didn't suck in substance, but using humor and other devices so your subconscious got split and hit on multiple levels at once.

Everything had already been written in rock music. It seemed like the last place left to go. There was still risk there. One of the reasons “Loveless” works so well is specifically because the lyrics are indecipherable. Vague images, or fantasies. I thought about doing something similar in spirit, but with a more concrete ambiguity, so it pointed to this future event that you can somehow tell is rooted in reality, but just out of reach. We busted our asses too. The next MBV record was more of a straight-up string of images. Flashes, even less linear. Like a trip. Some kind of post-apocalyptic acid flashback. All of this happens while the music carries you along, really, so it aims at both targets. I guess that's what all good music normally does, so I honestly don't know if I added anything.

A lot of the record's legend and cult status, aside from its beauty and power, comes down to the staging of an apocalypse in Texas. But for me, as much as I know you from your solo record, from meeting you and from seeing you play live, “TTJC” actually sounds even more personal than your later work. The irony and the torment mixed together, the cathartic power of the music, but, more deeply, you can still feel that you needed to make this record this way, for yourself first of all. Do you agree?

You're very perceptive, and correct. In my experience, men tend to use metaphors and shadows to hide the things that scare them most. If I'm wrapping my art in a story, it's usually because I've got something deeper to communicate. Christ spoke in parables specifically to reach deeper truths that were beyond dialectical expression. If we could easily explain or transfer spiritual epiphanies, we would.

One thing that's always surprised me is the fact that you have a bigger following in Europe than in the United States. This record was only available as an import, if I'm not mistaken. I read that you draw a distinction with the kind of religious upbringing we have in Europe, which is interesting. Even though the degree to which religion is embedded in society varies a lot from country to country (as I imagine it does in the US too). Personally I think it's more about the approach to art, which you also mention when you talk about this. Sorry, I'm rambling. I actually have a pretty basic question: has this disconnect from your scene, from your original audience, ever bothered you?

All bigotry bothers me. It's boring and it pisses me off like hell. Europe is pretty post-Christian. For the most part. Maybe not in the Catholic south, but for the most part. Symbols tend to shift the closer you get to the Equator, same as in the rest of the world. It's hotter. People need God in a more tangible way, it's a dependency they're reminded of daily.

America, when the album was born, was entrenched in a Manichean left/right politics. I mean, “believers” of any kind got precious little respect from the liberal left, especially not within the immature indie-rock community, made up mostly of rich white kids from the East and West Coasts with their punk or art-punk bands. The Bible Belt crowd were considered a bunch of losers. Times have changed a lot. America is smarter and more in control, and more informed now, despite the political climate. People have more perspective and awareness. They read. The internet has made the world smaller, it's killed off idols. But back then, if you were mentioned, or used Christian symbols or imagery to express something that wasn't anti-Christian, you were immediately labeled a Christian rock band and shoved into a box where you'd spend eternity withering away. In fact, people enjoyed pointing at you, like, “hey guys, we found another one, this band has a couple of Christians in it, they must really suck.” It was pretty stupid. You could be the best band in the world, but the ears just couldn't hear it. And, understandably, religion had been shoved down people's throats and used for all the worst reasons. But, to use a simplistic analogy, it would sound completely ridiculous if someone dismissed the Sistine Chapel over an ideological disagreement. And yet that's how it went, back then, for at least another decade or so. If you were white and played rock'n'roll, you couldn't admit to sharing the faith of another two billion people on the planet. Being a believer was seen as intellectual suicide, let alone being a Christian. But Europe is full of Christian heritage in art, paintings, cathedrals, music, etc. It's easier for you to separate the two things. We don't have anything like that. We're new, historically speaking. Religion is/was shoved down our throats, and so people become/became reactionary. It seems easier for Europeans to separate ideology from art.

I wouldn't know. Maybe it was just the language barrier that got us an audience over there. Metaphors aren't as big an issue on European soil. The wounds are/were still fresh, there. Religion is still a living thing.

But then, in places like Italy, as I said, symbols still shift, even something as simple as a "socialist" beard. We don't have the political baggage of Rome, for instance. Rome means nothing to the Southern redneck. Human rights versus power. Southerners might want the government to make sure creationism gets taught in school, at least as a viable option, but they still don't want it meddling in the private sphere any more than necessary. I hope that makes some kind of sense.

Also, we never managed to tour on our own before we broke up. In the States, back then, you had to play a ton of dates. It's a huge territory. So many people. Anyone who saw us live got converted. Actually, I remember a couple of reviews saying it was the only "religious music" it was okay to listen to. How nice of them. Imagine saying, this is the only Jewish music it's okay to listen to. That's stupid.

Sometimes I think the record is too honest, too blunt in a way, it doesn't linger in the usual alt-country/southern gothic imagery (lone travelers, herds on the move, deserted drugstores, you name it), the kind of thing that appeals to the "alternative" listener. Do you think there's been, or still is, a bias by which true art/indie music can only be made from an atheist or agnostic point of view?

Again, I'm a bit older now. My symbols have been confiscated. Hijacked. New meanings. I hope the milestones I used with language hold up like road signs. It's hard when you're dealing with such weighty material, but it also means the possibility of a greater elevation. Being aware of where we came from back then, poor, religious white kids from the Southern Bible Belt, it wouldn't have been honest for us not to use them. I had a personal responsibility to my creator, to the code that "saved" me, that "elevated" me. It would have been cowardly of me not to at least try, through my art, to dance around the skeptics and the proponents of cultural relativism. I talk about it as if it matters. No one would have listened to me anyway. I figured we might sell maybe 2,000 copies locally, over the years. So I set out to make the whole thing a private dialogue between me and God, and leave the rest to art's own responsibility. Honest atheists have a hard time of it, because they know that, in the end, none of their symbols mean anything except what they themselves assign to them. That's the whole controversy. A believer's worth doesn't depend on his own endorsement of it. Again, I'm talking about it as if it mattered. It doesn't.

What I'm trying to say is: do you think, maybe, your record was too challenging for them, in every sense?

Yes. Also, there was a lot more religious weight on Americans back then. Emotional, reactionary atheists. Pitchfork branded us as Bush and NRA supporters. They got it completely wrong. That's basically what their review amounts to, judging ideology above and before the music. That's a very poor critical framework. I don't even know if they ever listened to the record, or my solo album for that matter. Both reviews read as if they'd already made up their minds before hearing the albums. But then again, if a work is so polarizing that it divides the audience before they've even heard it, that's actually pretty impressive. Either way, both those records are solid work. I know what I'm doing. Black magic. I've been playing guitar since I was 12. If I'm still not acceptable, I should just quit.

We thought the rap-style cover, Pen&Pixel-style, would help soften the bigoted, religious reactions from the press to our heavy-handed lyrics, give them a bit of humor. I was wrong. And by the way, I've got a ton of guns now, a ton, but I mainly need them to shoot Pitchfork reviewers once America is finally out of civilization. I'm working on it.

There's clearly a lot of work you put into making such a disruptive record.You won't be the same after listening to "TTJC". I was wondering how the artwork fits into your project.

Oh. God bless you. Thanks for your enthusiasm. As for the cover, I needed a bit of humor to introduce ourselves. I drew on those old Pen&Pixel rap covers at the time. Pimps. That garish Southern flashiness. Braggadocio. Talking about those things without actually being them. The will to go beyond. To become what you are. All of that. Poor people pretending to be rich until they actually become rich.

The first cover didn't really land. The label was afraid to promote it, so it didn't work the way I wanted. This time we got it right. It's one of those things where, if you don't go over the top, it just doesn't work. Now it works. Plus, Mute let me do the CD with the layout featuring the cross. I know nobody listens to CDs anymore, but still, it's exactly how I'd pictured it from the start, so it was special for me to be able to make it real. It feels like a miracle we managed to pull it off.

I think if there are young kids out there who "discover" the album, it'll be fun for them to sit with the artwork and look at it while they listen. It takes me back to a time when the physical object mattered, when you could get excited about a cover, when its symbols transcended alongside the music. I'm glad they let me push past the boundaries. Plus, we're selling it with a golden ticket to the Promised Land, if and when hardships become redeemable in Texas.

Does it bother you that rock music has become noticeably more bourgeois today? You play rock shows in theaters for seated audiences, I saw you play in Milan in an art gallery...

I like sitting down. I get tired standing in one spot for hours trying to focus on the music. What interests me is the absence of smoke. It's a totally "clean" experience now. Not bad in itself, just different.

When I was a kid, going to a rock show meant venturing into a Dantean inferno. Smoke and fire, drunk earthly characters, people falling on top of each other. It's all cleaned up now, regulated, orderly. But that's the new world order, on its way to extinction. The whole world is becoming bourgeois. Branded. Numbered. There's no more dream/illusion. There's an answer for everything. And one of those answers is to quit smoking, which you should do so you can live longer and enjoy more music.

What interests me now is how sounds themselves have become bourgeois. Over the last fifteen years, our ears have gotten used to so many sounds. Nothing is shocking to the ear anymore. The internet changed everything. People don't realize what we've done. We created a huge organism with a nervous system. It's over. We were making dangerous music when we started. Now those sounds are everywhere. Explosions In The Sky are in football commercials. We used to play together in front of ten people back in the day. Them opening for us. Now they're a full-on independent business, they've got big houses and money in the bank because the whole world listens to them. But the buffalo went extinct in the end...

So, your first album with LTE came out in 2001. Your solo album is from 2011. Can you give us a prediction about the next one? Thanks again for your time.

I don't want to start making prophecies, but if I had to, I'd say I'll start putting out records every few months. There's an old Yiddish saying: "Want to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans."

Hey, listen, it's a real honor for me to answer your questions. Thanks for showing interest in a project that really defined the lives of three men. We worked on it like maniacs, and as a result, our lives fell apart for at least a decade. Very, very few people care about this little rock artwork. It's very pre-new-millennium, but we hope the new remixed version gets some attention and reaches a few hundred more people and does some good. That would put a smile on our faces.

Music comes and goes, symbols get co-opted. I hope our songs stay the same. God bless you!

Do you know Verdi? He died in Milan. I read it this morning, in a book about opera. Did you know his name was a symbol during the unification of Italy? Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italy. You should read about it. It's pretty cool. And the themes, the musical themes... Fighting for freedom, defending your honor. All before recorded music, all before television, just your melodies...

I meet Josh T. Pearson in this elegant Milanese art gallery, occasionally converted into a concert hall for special events like this one. Standing, he wanders around with his guitar, sketching out fragments of songs, his own and others' (something he'll keep doing throughout the interview), amid somber abstract paintings and stark minimalist decor. His exhausted look, the haunted glint in his eyes, dramatically heightens the sense of alienation of someone who has been overexposed to the public and the press, eager to discover a new character — in his case, almost a new Messiah. This is the fourth interview he's given today in Milan. Everyone wants to see him, wants to hear his music and his words, maybe even touch him, or drink a bit of his soul. Part of the messianic myth that's been built around him — complete with shroud-like merchandising — thus seems to be coming true.

Alright, you ask the questions, you're the boss.

I'd like to start with a quote of yours.

Am I in trouble?

Maybe...

Do you like the record?

Oh yes. A lot.

He gets up and opens the door. The room is hot and stifling.

I think it's going to be a great show.

He sits back down, with some effort.

I'm tired, man. It's been a long life. OK. Shoot.

A bit of both. I don't feel “detached”, because these songs are too personal. I know I have to channel certain aspects of myself. On the other hand, I feel like they could destroy me.

It surprises me how you can just sit down, pick up a guitar and play this kind of material [he'd just recorded a few tracks for the Italian Rolling Stone while I was waiting, ed.].

It surprises me too, that particular “switching on and off”. You know, I did a few tours with Dirty Three and I was really impressed by Warren [Ellis, ed.]. He could just drop into a song like that [snaps his fingers, ed.] with this intense, magnificent… He could really express those things, make that shift. For me it's all a bit more personal than what I'm used to. I play and sing… It takes a while to settle down, to get into the songs in a space where there are people around. I'd say it's like acting but it's not really, it's real, so I'd say… I don't know. Sometimes, before a show, I tell myself: “I'm never doing this again” and then, when I see it's good work, that people are moved by it, I start to reconsider. I was worried about having to do it every single night.

You played some of these songs over the years, before recording the album. What was the audience's reaction, on those occasions?

Oh, good. It was positive, quite encouraging. They're painful songs, so… People were touched by them. The purpose seemed good, since they made people happy, enriched someone's life, encouraged them to have, maybe, a slightly broader view of life. I think that's a good thing, I think it's healthy.

Well… Years of practice. It usually starts with the music first, I group things into categories – a particular vocal line, songs with a certain tonality, I group these together – and then it's a balance between words and music. I have to choose the best melody and… Letting the vocal line or the music obey the song is the first and last rule. Always listen to what it has to tell you, listen to where the song is going. If it's meant to be short, let it be short, if it's going to be long, so be it, just obey. If it says: “Repeat the same shape”… Space is a… Space, space, space. Space is the key to letting it breathe. I think that's the oldest rule for making a song.

Yes, three or four months, if you add up the actual work. Even though it took me years, it's three or four months of actual work.

Was this long wait due to practical difficulties, or because you didn't feel ready to go into the recording studio?

Oh, I didn't think I was going to record these songs. I spent a decade writing piece after piece, putting them into categories. I didn't know if I'd share them with anyone else. I treated them as “performance art” and played them live. These songs, which I happened to be working on at the time, made me rethink my aesthetic, my artistic aesthetic. I did a couple of shows… Then I thought: “We'll try recording them to see if we can capture this thing”.

[Chuckles, ed.] Yeah, yeah. But it's also because I was going through all of that at the time, the songs... They were so fresh. I hadn't had time to heal. It was almost as painful as it was...

I could. I've messed around with some electric guitar, they sound great. It's a completely different thing, a completely different interpretation. They sound... They sound good. They give much more vivid feelings, a different color. I haven't tried it with drums yet.

Well, originally I played acoustic when I first learned. Then I moved on to electric guitar and alternate tunings and, after six or seven years with that stuff, after Lift To Experience... I went off to the countryside and put down my electric guitar and deliberately went back to standard tunings and acoustic guitar, as a challenge to myself. I wasn't into contemporary post-rock music anymore, not at all, I simply went back to country, folk songs, standard tunings [he improvises a conventional chord progression on his guitar, ed.], that kind of chords. The challenge was trying to create something interesting out of basic country tradition, after six, seven years. And somehow I moved around a conventional motif, I mean, I was trying, at a certain point, to create that kind of rock landscape with just a guitar and reverb.

It really was a labor of love for us. Just three guys, really making the music we wanted to make, with no worries or fears about anything else. And that seemed to get muddied, six years later, further down the line, because I wanted it to stay pure. It was a symphony to God, it was basically sacred music. It was a kind of... Love letter. And we really came close to falling in love but... Things got a bit complicated, there were a lot of personal issues, as individuals... I needed to leave and explore the world. I had thought to make sure that whatever good was in it would stay... It sounds harsh, I know. It was serious stuff. We were truly Christian at heart. We were a great band. Great bands break up. We had our integrity. It's crazy how every great art falls apart... We wanted to follow a path, it's not like there was this huge, huge pressure. And, I don't know, I just needed more time.

Well, I think I've become one! I mean... Spreading the Good News! I hope so! Good works. In the tradition of my God, I spread good things, doing good. It's better to do good, to believe. I hope to share something of that... If it's good, or it's good work, you're preaching hope and life. There are places where people need encouragement, you know.

Oh well, he volunteered. He offered to... Play.

I read there was a bet involved...

Yeah... He lost a bet.

OK, you won't tell me what it was... You're playing quite a lot in Europe now. Do you feel more at home here than in your home country?

People respect me more here. People always respect you more if you come from somewhere else... It's human nature. They take you more seriously if you're not from around there. So I haven't played in the States lately. Last March was the first time I'd played solo in years...

I go to the End Of The Road Festival every year…

Ah yes. Lovely. Lovely people.

What can you tell us about that experience?

Oh, it's more or less the perfect size, five thousand, seven thousand people. It's that kind of small festival with great music, artists wandering around having fun. People get to meet their… heroes. Which is good. For an artist, it's humanizing. It makes you realize it's possible to stay human. There are a lot of… peacocks. It's cool.

Are you going to play a secret set in the woods?

I did it once, unannounced. I don't know when I'm playing… Sunday afternoon? That girl who plays… the one who plays the harp?

Joanna Newsom.

Yes, Joanna. She's playing.

I don't know. I haven't thought about it.

Maybe with a band?

Hell, I wish I could afford it! I don't know how many records I'd have to sell to pay for a band…

I honestly have no idea. It took me years to put these songs together. Yes, I think I'd like to put out more records. I hope so. I'll have to think about it and hear what the good Lord has to say. You know, this one [the record, ed.] seems to have done some good in the world…

Are you impressed by your own success?

I'm shocked… I didn't know there was all this sadness in the world. There are five songs that last… I'm surprised to be here, being asked questions. I'm in shock. It's a challenging work. And it's a record "from beginning to end," in the way I wrote it. It's a single piece.

It won't be – a few hours later – Pearson's greatest performance. The audience receives him coldly, somehow, as if disappointed to find themselves in front of simply a human being, one who, every so often, lets out a hysterical laugh from sheer exhaustion. He'll probably never be the kind of artist who can deliver a show every night with the same intensity as Warren Ellis; but this will always remain his strength, the ability to show himself as he is, to lay bare all his feelings and emotions, even the ones he shouldn't.