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Jun 20, 2018 Web Exclusive By Mischa Pearlman

It’s been seven years since Josh T. Pearson—the reluctant frontman of oddball Texas rock ‘n’ rollers Lift to Experience—released his debut solo album, Last of the Country Gentlemen. A maudlin, lugubrious affair, its quasi-spiritual songs dripped with a heavy sorrow that infiltrated your bones, that offered no sense of reprieve save for the raw, (fallen) angelic beauty of its seven songs.

From the off—from the emphatic, deliberately ironic proclamation of its title, no less—it’s clear that The Straight Hits! is an entirely different beast. Not only do the first three tracks swagger with an intoxicated (and intoxicating) classic rock ‘n’ roll bravado, but in their jaunty, upbeat exuberance, they’re actually—shock! horror!—fun. “Give It to Me Straight,” for example, is a rollicking honkytonk number that builds and builds to become a thigh-slapping, beer-swilling, barroom sing-along complete with participatory whoops and hollers from the rest of the (presumably imaginary) bar it sounds like the song was recorded in.

They’re not all jaunty, upbeat, decadent numbers, however. “The Dire Straits of Love” is a gently flowing number that veers between blues spiritual and mournful country ballad, while “Whiskey Straight Love” is a calmly plucked lament that throws back the shots from its sad, despondent seat at the bar. Closer “Straight Down Again!” exists as much for the space and silence that linger between piano and guitar of its almost Nick Cave-ian composition as it does in the emotionally vulnerable notes that fill your head as it plays in all its discordant, broken beauty.

That each song has the word “straight” in it might seem like something of a gimmick, but that’s far from the case. This is an album—much like its predecessor—that’s utterly pure of heart. The jovial uplift of those first few songs might, at first, come off as affectation, but as a metaphor for life—how the exuberance of youth and young love and ambition falters and fades into an existential black hole, giving way to work and bills and the inevitable death of everyone you know and love—it couldn’t be more incisive. A welcome return. (www.facebook.com/joshtpearson/)

Author rating: 7.5/10