Josh T. Pearson – Last of the Country Gentlemen

With a decade having come and gone since Josh T. Pearson last graced our stereos, it’s gratifying to discover that Last of the Country Gentlemen is just as potent, emotional, humbling and beautiful as Pearson’s former band Lift to Experience’s existential-rock masterpiece The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads – an album Pearson describes as his “own teenage symphony to God.” However, it’s not the Lord on his mind this time round – although he’s never too far from his thoughts – on this particular collection there’s a woman lodged in there deep.

Pearson succeeds here by instilling humorous one-liners with the most heartbreaking sentiment, like on Sweetheart I Ain’t Your Christ when he sings, “When I said I’d give my life, I wasn’t talking suicide” or on the wryly named Honeymoon Is Great, I Wish You Were Her. A precious record, almost certainly among the most soulful you’re likely to hear this year. [Alan Souter]