Lift To Experience
The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads
Bella Union
Imagine a young Leonard Cohen, listening to U2, having been raised by a Pentecostal father and fronting a three piece from the heartland of Texas and you will begin to understand what Lift To Experience sounds like. This release, The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads, is a sprawling epic that encompasses loss, redemption, and the unquenchable longing for faith. Billed as a concept album that sees Texas as the Promised Land, this release explores the tension and urgency of redemption. At once life affirming and yet a searing inquiry into the depths of the human heart, the music washes from crescendo to crescendo with lead singer and guitarist Josh Pearson’s voice hitting those sublime notes usually reserved for singers like Bono and Thom Yorke.
Awash in poetry that borrows images from Blake and the Book of Revelations, the sonnets of John Donne and enough rock hubris to fuel the careers of a thousand lesser bands, Lift To Experience careen through the deserts and badlands that reach from Texas to the shore of Galilee and into the fearful symmetry of the human heart. At times a bit like My Bloody Valentine thumping Gideon’s Bible and at other times like The Dirty Three being fronted by a young Nick Cave, fresh from being expelled from a seminary, this music is gorgeous and powerful in its singular, apocalyptic vision.
Strangely comforting despite its fierceness, like elements from the Hebrew Bible or the Book of Psalms, there is a tender consolation in these songs that only renders their message all the more powerful.
