Josh T Pearson: Live in Sheffield

Two support bands first, however.

 

Smokers Die Young seem in all aspects to be an Americana bluegrass tinged rock band, fuelled by... alcohol mainly. A local troop, their whiskey - or more accurately, Heineken - soaked rock sway isn't to my taste and doesn't really thrill or enrapture the audience, apart from the band's friends in attendance. Despite them finishing with a Will Oldham song, which sounds forced and slightly pub-rock, their songs, disappointingly, do little to build the excitement.

 

Two piece, We Fear The Death Rattle are curiously on the bill too. Why curiously? Well, because they seem a little "learner driver." Aiming towards the stoned groove of a band like The Kills, they manage a groove but, despite their best efforts (weirdly including interspersed Theremin solos), this girl/boy two-piece are little more than a band trying to be The Kills... But they're way off I'm afraid.

 

Finally, on comes the Texan preacher man to rapturous applause. Tipping a soldier salute in thanks to the crowd, Josh T Pearson invites the audience into some quiet, graceful banter before assuring us, “Right, I'm gonna start with a cover of Boney M and I swear by the end you'll be crying!” Big mistake, Josh, he's not wrong but we're all in stitches. He is too. Having heard this cover I know it is beautiful and tragic, but Mr Pearson can't get going until we've got our “Game Faces” on. After some gentle scolding and ordering, in jest, the laughers, smokers and jokers to leave, we're all go.

 

Immediately silenced, you can hear a pin drop so awesome is the power of this man in full flow. Rivers of Babylon never sounded so breathtaking as this, but you can see the reason for his choice of cover, those lyrics fit so easily into Pearson's world of tragic meditations; the audience lap it up in hushed awe.

 

Josh is always quick to poke fun at himself and the audience in between songs to keep the mood up as before he plays “another sad one." That's what we're here for, Josh. But this is the gentle nature of this unassuming yet booming Texan, in song he is deeply entranced, but between that he is, for want of a better term, one funny fucker!

 

Sweetheart, I Ain't Your Christ has me and I'm sure the many others in the audience choking back a tear or two. That ever-so-sweet vocal melody, “Sweetheeeeeeart, I-aiiii-ai-ai-ai-aiii-ainnnn't... your Christ,” is what bites. If you've heard it, you'll know!

 

With effortlessness, he streams through the mighty Woman When I've Raised Hell. Take note; it is truly tremendous the way it shifts from gentility to complete cacophony. Thou Art Loosed terms the end of the gig before he re-addresses the crowd with an encore of songs which may well be from the EP To Hull and Back, and therefore songs I am unfamiliar with but are soul-punching to say the least. I must get hold of that EP.

 

Josh T Pearson seems to have found a fondness and a reason to play his music. His reason being us, the people who want and need that music. While he may admit the songs don't get any easier to play the more he plays them, it seems he is satisfied and, in a sense, happy to play them for those who want to hear. Even if they hurt to play.

 

Graceful Josh is an absolute joy to watch, and a character you immediately fall in love with on stage.

 

Would you expect anything else?

 

Outstanding.