Josh T. Pearson Releases Animated Video For "Straight To The Top!"; New Album "The Straight Hits!" Out April 13

JOSH T. PEARSON RELEASES ANIMATED VIDEO FOR “STRAIGHT TO THE TOP!” SXSW PERFORMANCES ANNOUNCED NEW ALBUM THE STRAIGHT HITS! OUT APRIL 13

Photo: Eliot Lee Hazel

JOSH T. PEARSON has shared the video for “Straight To The Top!,” a fast-paced animation created by Pedro Carvalho, João Santos Ponciano, Laura Athayde and Marcos Vinícius. Watch the video for the lead single taken from The Straight Hits! – out April 13 on Mute – here. Catch Josh and his band, featuring members of The Texas Gentlemen, at SXSW next week. See below for a full itinerary. Preorder The Straight Hits! here. Pedro Carvalho, a 21-year-old Brazilian graphic designer, who graduated from design school last year, was spotted by Pearson on Instagram and approached to make a video. He explains: “To be asked to make an animation for Josh's single was a huge honor. Knowing that I couldn't possibly make the video by myself, I called three friends: João Santos Ponciano, Laura Athayde and Marcos Vinícius, the most talented designers I could think of. The animation took around four weeks to complete and we couldn’t be more excited about it!” Josh T. Pearson and his band, which features Lift To Experience drummer Andy Young and members of the Texas Gentlemen, take to the road with a tour across Europe in May and June, with the final date of the UK tour at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire on May 22.   Though he’s been a recording artist for over two decades now, and has been writing songs for thirty years, The Straight Hits! is only Josh T. Pearson’s second solo album and follows his acclaimed debut, 2011’s Last Of The Country Gentlemen and 2001’s The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads by Lift To Experience. Lately, the dapper Texan gentleman has been motivated by a desire to share more Josh T. Pearson music with the world, before it’s too late. “In the last years I learned to dance, take drugs, make love… choose life. I got rid of the beard, cut my hair and started wearing color.” “I was at the US Embassy in London when the shit went down with the presidential election in 2016,” he remembers. “It was unsettling; I’ve never seen the country so divided. A responsibility seemed to shift within me – like, where are the people really stepping up to spread joy?” It is in this spirit that Mr. Josh T. Pearson presents The Straight Hits!, an album which began as a mere creative exercise - each song had to follow certain parameters, listed below as The Five Pillars - and one that has given Pearson the freedom to write a lighter, more “straight” album, described by Uncut as demonstrating “a sense of well being and a lightness of spirit”. The Straight Hits! features multiple different flavors of country, rock and all points in between, taking in blasts of goofy shit-kicking country-punk (opener “Straight To The Top!”), cataclysmic rock’n’roll playing its romantic drama at high-stakes (“Loved Straight To Hell,” which compresses the elemental power of Lift To Experience into five and a half minutes of symphonic turmoil); aching folksy mourn (“Dire Straights Of Love”), and even a bona fide love song, the deliciously profound ache of “A Love Song (Set Me Straight),” which Pearson admits breaks several of the Five Pillars, but obeys an unwritten Sixth Pillar: Musical rules are made to be broken. Written in three days, the tracks were cut with similar no-nonsense focus, in three days with engineer Matt Pence (who made Mute’s 2017 reissue of The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads sound so vivid) at the controls, Lift To Experience drummer Andy Young once again manning the traps, and Daniel Creamer and Scott Lee Jr. of The Texas Gentlemen on keyboards and bass guitar. The recordings were then flown to the UK to be mixed by Ben Hillier. And while the whole project was meant as a simple “exercise,” the result is some of Pearson’s finest music. Josh T. Pearson has freed himself from the mythology that has surrounded him since Lift To Experience’s implosion, his subsequent years in the wilderness travelling throughout Europe and beyond, and the release of his acclaimed debut album. There’s new Josh T. Pearson music in the world, and it’s joyful, giddy, life-affirming stuff.   JOSH T. PEARSON 2018 TOUR March 12 – Austin, TX – SXSW Discover Denton Texas Music Showcase - 1am (Sidewinder Inside) March 13 – Austin, TX – SXSW w/ Low - 9pm (St. David’s Historic Sanctuary) March 14 – Austin, TX – SXSW SX San Jose - 4pm (Hotel San Jose) March 15 – Austin, TX – SXSW Tiger Bomb Promo Official SXSW Showcase - 1am (Valhalla) March 17 – Austin, TX – SXSW Chihuahua’s Parties At The 13th Floor - 6pm (13th Floor) April 13 – London, England – Rough Trade West (instore + signing, from 2pm) ** April 13 – London, England – Rough Trade East (instore + signing, from 7pm) ** April 14 – Bristol, England – Rough Trade (instore + signing, from 6.30pm) ** April 15 – Nottingham, England – Rough Trade (instore + signing, from 5.30pm) ** May 15 – Leeds, England – Brudenell Social Club May 16 – Birmingham, England – The Glee Club May 18 – Dublin, Ireland – Whelans May 19 – Glasgow, Scotland – Art School May 20 – Manchester, England – Gorilla May 22 – London, England – Shepherd’s Bush Empire May 24 – Paris, France – La Maroquinerie May 26 – Brussels, Belgium – Rotonde Botanique May 27 – Amsterdam, Netherlands – Bitterzoet May 28 – Cologne, Germany – Gebäude 9 May 29 – Hamburg, Germany – Knust May 30 – Berlin, Germany – Quasimodo June 4 – Stockholm, Sweden – Kagelbanen June 5 – Copenhagen, Denmark – DR Koncerthuset Studio 3 June 6 – Oslo, Norway – Parkteatret August 30 - September 2 – Tollard Royal, England – End Of The Road Festival ** Josh T. Pearson solo