Lift to Experience - The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads
(Bella Union)

Before the music itself can be discussed, the form in which it comes must be addressed by way of a brief digression. Remember back when records were digestible? Before compact discs compelled bands to release every piece of crap scrap of music they ever puked up, records would fit easily onto one side of a 90 minute TDK, and a double album was a bold stroke of pretension and self-aggrandizement reserved only for the truly bloated. Nowadays, your average everyday dork with a four track will regularly heap dreck upon the marketplace that puts the double albums of yore to shame. Over seventy minutes of music on a single disc! Thus, if you put out a double compact disc, you have better have a damned good reason for doing so. What you are documenting and asking the general public to plunk down their hard-earned American dollars for must be well worth the time and money that will be invested into those tiny aluminum platters. To release, as your debut album a double cd would take one hundred per cent pure balls. Not only do these plucky Texans have a pair of Lone Stars big enough to mount such a feat, but they go so far as to emblazen the cover with a direct and personal challenge to Spiritualized's J. Spaceman (perhaps their sole rival as far as overblown ambition in guitar rock, and to whom they, musically, owe a considerable debt), exclaiming: "Ladies and gentlemen we are playing with one guitar."

Many have made comparisons between Lift to Experience and Spiritualized, and to notable shoegazers such as My Bloody Valentine and Ride. I am not going to dispute those comparisons, and would even extend it to the precursor of all shoegazing, the Cocteau Twins, whose guitar processing techniques no doubt had tremendous influence on Kevin Shields and countless others. Lift to Experience, however, presents that kind of thing in a distinctively American kind of way. They are loose and ragged in a way that many prime U.K. musicians seem to have difficulty achieving, as if, way out west in Texas, they have dispensed with all of the false niceties and just get straight at the heart of the matter: to crank up the amps and let it loose.

The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads is an astonishing debut, epic in scope, lofty in ambition, moving effortlessly from spaced out bliss to heavenly hymns to hellfire rock. Occasionally all within the course of a single song, such as the album opener "Just as Was Told," where the shoegazer melody and fuzzy guitars occasionally lapse into heavily layered noise, before the whole thing cracks open at the end leaving a lone guitar crying in the wilderness of the mix, amidst strange pulses. This startling track fades seamlessly into "Down Came the Angles," a stripped down piece which more than adequately showcases Josh Pearson's considerable talents both as a songwriter of unusual poignancy and vocalist of unusual sensitivity. "Down Came the Angels" relies almost entirely upon Pearson's vocals, augmented by occasional, treated guitar and bass accents (points like this are where the Cocteau Twin's influence really becomes apparent, being able to draw so much out of so little, that aforementioned one guitar--this is no surprise, especially given that the Cocteau Twins Simon Raymonde and Robin Guthrie mixed the record).

Much of the record vacillates between the points established on the first two tracks, instances of melodic, quiet ecstasy punctuated by huge and loud barrages of guitar noise. What is remarkable, however, is that the noise does not disrupt the tone established by the quieter parts. That is, they are not dissonant, no-wave assaults so much as they reflect the emotional point where the internal fire burns too brightly to be contained, and it blazes open. The loud parts are as touching and melodic as the quiet ones, and they each depend upon one another. Standouts include "The Ground so Soft," where Pearson breaks out into an a cappella hymn (multi-tracked harmonizing with his own voice), whose theme is the repeated "Lord, rescue me" and is based in part on the apostle Paul's challenge of "Death, where is thy sting? Grave where is thy victory?" What is truly remarkable is that such a sentiment, presented in such a traditional style, can so easily coexist with the very modern, and very worldly straight-up rock tunes, such as the excellent "These are the Days," which suckers the listeners with a lilting, rising melody, only to ratchet up the intensity and volume a couple of times before really hitting its stride. The key seems to be that the rock is never delivered without a healthy sense of the same notions which underpin the quieter moments of the album, and the quiet moments are clearly crafted with an eye towards the rock that is inevitably to come. (A questions which remains, though, is how seriously are we to take all of this gospel business. At times the sincerity seems unquestionable, while at others it could be nothing but tongue in cheek. One wonders whether this music is the songwriters attempt at working out an individual's spirituality from his personal religious context, which is not wholly being rejected, but modified to fit a personal circumstance).

This kind of unity is essential to the success of the album, as, it being a concept album, the songs are more interdependent upon each other than those on a regular record. In fact, even the titles, taken together form sentences containing distinct ideas: disc one (the Texas disc) is "Just as was told/down came the angels/falling from cloud 9/with crippled wings/waiting to hit/the ground so soft," and disc two (the Jerusalem disc) is "These are the days/when we shall touch/down with the prophets/to guard and guide you/into the storm." On track five, "Waiting to hit," near the center of the album, Pearson lays out the overriding concept in this nice exchange: "I'm just a stupid ranch hand/in a Texas rock band/trying to understand/God's master plan./When the Lord said 'son/ tell the word before it explodes/the glory of the Texas-Jerusalem crossroads.'/I said Lord/'I'll make you a deal, I will/if you give me a smash hit/so I can build a city on a hill.'/And he said 'Son, I will if you will.'/I said 'my sweet Lord, it's a deal.'" Additionally, there are no breaks between the songs on each disc, making the entire set, rather than being two discs containing a combined eleven tracks, more like two songs broken into smaller sub-parts. Sadly, I have not yet had enough time to fully chart the thematic elements (either musical or lyrical) which define each disc and their relation to each other. But, hey, I can't do everything for you. Buy this record, or get left behind.

dave christensen 2001 sep 14