“I’m not much of an interpretative dancer”: Catching up with Josh T. Pearson – Part Two

This is Part Two of The Line of Best Fit’s interview with Josh T. Pearson. To read part one, click here.

From the vast emotional scope of Josh T Pearson‘s music’s themes to its tiny nuggets of inspiration – “gems of creativity, jewels” he dubs them – Pearson’s début is carefully considered, and he had to ensure, first and foremost, that it lived up to his own exacting standards: “They crop up a lot. They really do. Yeah, just tiny little tags at the beginning and the end that really “tie the room together”, to quote The Dude,” he laughs. “It needs to work from beginning to end, and there needs to be a delicate beauty there, a fragileness really captured on record.”

But how does he know when he’s found the perfect mix? “Well, I think every song is different. Listening is my tool. If I could be so bold, I would hope that I’ve learned to listen a little more, as if the song is speaking to me personally.”

“When it’s done, it’s done,” he continues. “There’s a give and take organically between the music and say, the message, if you could atomise it that way, and when the song says it’s finished musically, there’s some reduction necessary between the lyric verses and melody. That’s the part I don’t like, when you have to make difficult choices. When you’re married to a certain melody line and you want the metre to run within that, but you need the lyric to match it or not match it. That’s the dangerous part. Those difficult decisions, as small as they come – a gap or a breath of air.”

“It’s just beauty,” he concludes. “Once it’s above your own personal threshold of beauty then it’s just those little things that are personal, that maybe no-one else notices. You’re just trying to decide “OK, what’s better in this situation, is the lyric line of the melody line?” So each one is different.”

It’s refreshing to hear a musician talk so openly about his songwriting progressions, especially given the intensely painful nature of the songs themselves, but Pearson’s not a believer in the old maxim that ‘pain produces the best art’: “I’m naturally drawn towards the creative sparks that come from little more pain or suffering, but I wouldn’t say that’s the best. I think there’s a lot of great art produced out of love and joy. I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s gotta be out there somewhere. We’ll find it eventually, and then we’ll destroy it!”

As we speak, ‘The Sound of Silence’ comes on the pub stereo – “I remember exactly where I was when I first really heard this song… Just in the back of a car, driving down the road. The whole car got quiet and me and the other guy in the backseat just paused” – and offers Pearson a moment outside his present self. A wistfulness overcomes his tall figure as he glances out onto the sun-dappled streets outside, where The Rolling Stones used to stumble in their hedonistic heyday. He seems to enjoy it, causing a momentary pause in conversation before we ask the songwriter about his own past, the unfortunately fleeting group that was Life To Experience.

“I stand behind it. It could’ve been mixed a lot better, but it’s a good album. I think it’s the greatest I’ve ever done! Definitely.”

Does answering questions about LTE frustrate or gladden him, a decade after its release? “I’m always glad. I mean I lost my mind over that thing. It was a gift of God just to be able to put it out, to make a record you wanted to make back then and put it out, back when there were record companies! I’m glad that it came out, and we could make our little mark, and that we could come over here, get to bring it to foreign lands. It opened up the world to us. I’m not upset at all to talk about it because I believe in it as a work, and it can still have a tangible effect on the listener if you sit down and lock yourself in a room to it.”

Drawing a thread through his last ten years, Pearson has cause to be joyful: “I’m just glad to be alive at this point, I’ll be honest. I mean these last 10 years has just been one day at a time, trying to survive, and it’s hard existing in this world… So, I’m shocked that I put out another record, because it’s such a fragile thing and a personal thing, that I got one over my own threshold of beauty, that I got my own personal shit together enough to finish something.”

A mention of the two days of recording in Berlin, from which Country Gentlemen was put together, also prompts a moment of release for the often pent-up singer. “It was just 2 days that took a lifetime out of me, and had it not worked, we wouldn’t’ve put it out. The essence of the heartbreak had to be captured. Fuck, that was an exorcism! That was tough. We had to wait 10 days between the two days to recover.”

It’s this outpouring of uninhibited emotion which makes it a special record, too. Pearson’s eyes glaze slightly as we discuss the short-but-intense process of making his solo début, and sparks of pain flicker momentarily in his deep-set eyes. Time has healed the wounds a touch, but there are lingering scars deep within which no number of years can truly wipe away.

It amazes Pearson that so many have connected to his personal tales of woe and wonder: “I’m a little surprised that 10-minute long break-up songs have touched a lot of people: by their nature they’re difficult. I thought the criticism would be, y’know, high marks, but that few people would get it,” the full-bearded country musician remembers.

“I mean I don’t listen to it. It’s just heavy, like getting the wind knocked out of you. It’s dangerous stuff. So in that regard I’m surprised that this many people have corresponded to it already.”

From the beautifully framed album cover – “I’m glad there’s just a little bit of her chest showing, because it’s just super sensitive, not sexual at all… that is fragility” – to the record’s poignant content, it seems people have taken Pearson’s album to heart much as he has done the country greats he adores: “I don’t want everyone else listening to George Jones, I want it for myself, ‘cause this is the real heavy, painful stuff that makes you cry.”

Equally obvious, it seems to many, is that we’ll still be listening to his tales of heartbreak in years to come, and still connecting with them as deeply as we do now. Such is the timeless nature of the emotions he communicates, and the force with which he weaves his finely balanced tales. So does he think that people will look back on his music in 40 years with the same affection that he does the music of George Jones or Simon & Garfunkel?

“God, I hope not! I hope they’ve got better lives.”

The Last of the Country Gentlemen is available now through Mute.