The Texas Jerusalem Crossroad [Double CD]

One listen to disc 2 of Texas Jerusalem Crossroads will leave you stunned, wondering what influences and upbringings brought about this genius band. Lyrically, LTE are all about.. religious revelations (it's the apocalypse and Texas is the promised land) and hidden messages. They are bringing the message to Europe in April and May in anticipation of their debut album's release.

Lift to Experience and centro-matic are wave 2 of the Texas Invasion that brought you And You Will Know Them by the Trail of Dead, Spoon, and At the Drive In last year. While Lift to Experience sound more like Spiritualized than their Texas neighbors, these bands share a common theme of intensity that is unrivaled.

This double album will leave you staring into space wondering where these boys get off telling YOU about the promised land.

If singer/guitarist Josh Pearson's deluded charismatic rantings are to believed, Texas is, literally, the reason.

"Is the world really ready for a 75-minute progressive country-emo concept album by three God-fearing ranch hands about Texas being the Promised Land?" asked NME on the release of this album in 2001. The answer unfortunately was a resounding no, since Josh Pearson's masterwork has been largely ignored or at best comes up in those rather sad "great lost album" polls.

In honesty everything about the album sounds wrong and completely over the top. It is littered with biblical references throughout (songs with titles like "Down with the Prophets" or "Grounds so soft" which is based on 1st Corinthians). Half the songs exceed 10 minutes and Josh Pearson and the crew on the album's cover look like they should be selling snakebite or fleecing the sick. Pearson is about 7 feet tall and his height is as large as his ambition. Then there is the central plot with Texas emerging from some apocalypse as a geographical "Noah's arks" with its epicentre in the town of Denton. Do I hear the call for a straightjacket? It all broadly sounds like pseuds corner and should be an utter disaster, but isn't, its Josh T Pearson's "teenage symphony to god" . In fact these two cds can barely contain the scope and scale of vision underpinning this concept and on times it feels as big and awe inspiring as the lone star state itself. References are of limited value but contextually we are in the territory of My Bloody Valentine, Explosions in the Sky and Mogwai but sound tracked to a voice so soft that the ghost of Jeff Buckley is evoked.

In addition care is needed not to create the impression that this album is somehow the heavy rock soundtrack for the Christian right and an ode to the bible belt. Pearson songs are full of humour and utterly preposterous. Thus he pleads at one time "Lord, I'll make you a deal: I will if you give me a smash hit so I can build a city on the hill". Similarly it blows you away with the sheer force and power of the music. "Falling from cloud 9" could easily just disintegrate but is holds to together to produce a huge blast of epic proportions. You feel on times that it will blow you away and that 20 guitars are playing. "These are the days" has a fantastic rumbling bass and Pearson planting a smashing kiss on the microphone. While "Into the storm" is massively religious but in hallucinatory visionary way. It is difficult to encapsulate the ambition poured into TTJC, you just need to hear it. There are in addition some storming Peel Sessions you should search for.

The album has never been repeated and Josh T Pearson tours occasionally as a country singer looking like a mountain man lost to nature and with a look in his eye of a which brings to realisation Tennessee Williams description of Southern Gothic as a style that captured "an intuition, of an underlying dreadfulness in modern experience." . The band as far as I am aware split in a blur of hard drinking and there is no sign at all of the album ever being followed up. Ultimately it doesn't need to be since its uniqueness and insanity is to be treasured. The Texas Jerusalem Crossroad is one of the greatest albums of the past twenty years and not owning it will lead you into a pit of fire of brimstone and a life of damnation.

Bought this when it first came out couple of years ago, still dont know that much about the band but know that cd2 is worth the five stars alone. Cd1 is good but put both together & its a mind blowing experiance, took me one or two listens to get it & lost it moving house but had to get it again. Country music meets punk Brit style, sounds good to me I had to buy it twice