Josh T Pearson

Paint for _me_ a picture, if you would: a basement, a stage, a singer. A cigarette hangs, never fully smoked, from the hunched figure's mouth; a guitar - acoustic, albeit electrically empowered, of course - sits upon his lap; his fingers curl and stretch above its strings in preparation of the set to follow. A little banter, a small joke - so far, such a lot of so what?

The so what is Josh Pearson: the stick-thin, skyscraper-tall frontman of Lift To Experience, more hair than human being. His beard spills before him like a waterfall frozen in time, moving only when the bigger picture about it (come now, work with the analogy, please) shifts into life. The cliffs - those sideburns - are topped by the trademark Stetson. The beer's not homebrew from a Texan backwater, but Pearson glugs it back all the same.

A shuffle, a sigh, another quip; then, song. Silence spreads from front to back as chatterboxes close for business: out to lunch, back in 30 minutes, do_ not_ disturb. Pearson lets a finger fall, then another, another; strumshine on a winter's day permeates even the deepest dungeon, and the red walls about us break to blue skies. This is the man's power - we know not where he found it, but we're not about to scour an entire state for its source - to bleed from a guitar the very building blocks of an emotionally affecting experience. Once minute he twists a wrist so slightly and the guitar quivers like a nervously dry bottom lip seconds before a first kiss, the throat more barren still, awaiting the gush of excitement collapsing the dam of expectation; the next, Pearson clicks a pedal or two and his instrument wails hellishly like the most savage of banshees, so much so that the man stands, bolt upright, and steps away from the amplifier. The beasts rage, teeth and hiss from inside wood, bars of too-easily-torn metal just keeping what should be restrained from frightening friendly faces. When he sits, again, he stomps and the floor shakes with him; when he requests the aforementioned few before him sing in time with his concluding tale of a devil on the run - the final act of exorcism in a set characterised by the battle of the angelic and its opposite - they do as told, without inhibition.

That's power, of a kind we've not seen before; it's art on a canvas never crafted before, music like something we heard once but forgot a long time ago. That's timelessness right there before us - it's not seen it, done it, bought it, burned it - it's so very far from the picture you painted but minutes ago.

A glass of whiskey sits atop his guitar case, its existence threatened by the continual stomp of thick-heeled boot on stage and a vibration comparable to a thousand back garden-scraping trains running overtime through speakers not worthy of such a boisterously beautiful visitation. Song fades to silence once more, and this time the chatterboxes rest their weapons of choice, taking arms instead together in unison. Or hands, actually, and repeatedly. Those that chose not to sing just smile - what's more, they're not sure why, exactly, but something's good. Something's right about this, something's right _on_.

And then the hunch is replaced and the man packs away the tools of his trade. Shuffle shuffle once more, sir, to wherever magic is brewed and bottled in your soul. Drink your beer first, do. Then come back, brother, and preach to us once more. We'll bring with us our paints and pencils and do for you a doodle; our sketches, though will never look the same way twice.