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.
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!”
‘Straight To The Top’ is full of manic energy, a thrashing country meets punk number, with a strong Iggy Pop vibe. The video is the perfect accompaniment to the song despite being an animated venture, which wouldn’t normally lend itself to this style. The mass of robots, motorcycle chases and fire actually just the thing to set it off.
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.
The Straight Hits! features multiple different flavours 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.
