Josh T. Pearson

Texas singer-songwriter Josh T. Pearson first gained notice as the frontman of the brief cult indie-roots outfit Lift to Experience, which put out a self-titled EP in 1997, followed by a lone single and the double album The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads in 2001—an underground classic—before the group disbanded. Over the subsequent ten years he toured extensively across the United States and overseas, among other appearances serving as an invited guest at multiple All Tomorrow’s Parties festivals. Under his own name he released an official live bootleg titled To Hull and Back, captured in the U.K., along with a live DVD single and one side of a split single shared with Australia’s Dirty Three, the latter containing his striking rendition of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”

Additional session work includes guest vocals on two songs from Bat for Lashes’ full-length Fur and Gold. In April 2009 he rejoined ex-Lift to Experience drummer Andy Young and bassist Robert B. Weaver III of the Paper Chase to back My Bloody Valentine during the latter’s re-formation shows in Austin, Texas. Later that year he relocated to Paris and played in a nightclub band alongside Bosque Brown and H-Burns, then departed the city for Berlin in early 2010. He signed with Mute Records in 2010 and cut his first album for the label, Last of the Country Gentlemen, whose opening single “Country Dumb,” a spare epic-pop piece, appeared in early March 2011; the full record followed weeks afterward.

In 2018 Pearson issued his second solo effort, The Straight Hits!, a ten-song collection in which every title contains the word “Straight” (or “Straits”). Again on Mute, the album marked a shift from its predecessor’s approach by emphasizing direct song forms and trading minimal acoustic settings for a fuller band sound.