Day 16 - "Waiting to Hit" by Lift to Experience (2000)

Try this one on for size. You’re a new band, trying to reach out to listeners. What strategy would you apply; what tricks and tips would you give? Perhaps you’d use a sensible musical template? Link yourselves to credible and more established acts? Ease listeners into your unique sound gently? Or, if you’re Lift to Experience, you’d release a double album about the Lord’s fiery judgement of the world and Texas’s ultimate survival to become the New Jerusalem. It’s no surprise that the concept was enough to stop most listeners dead in their tracks.

Lift to Experience’s first (and only) album, the 2000 Texas Jerusalem Crossroads thus begins with what must be one of the most jarring and unexpected openings ever set to record. The lyrics only give some sense of the apocalyptic madness:

This is the story of three Texas boys
Busy minding their own business
When the Angel of the Lord appeared unto them saying:

"When the Winston Churchill's start firin' their Winston rifles in the sky
from the Lone Star State, drinkin' their Lone Star beer and smoking their Winston cigarettes. You know the time is drawin' nigh when the sun shall be lifted on high".

We told them that didn't sound very "Sunday-go-to" in meaning

"What do you expect," they said "when God calls the crippled, deaf and blind to lead the children of Israel into the promised land?"

"The children of Israel?" we asked
"Don't you boys know nothing, the USA's the centre of Jerusalem!"

The band therefore adopt the role of prophets, promising God they will lead his chosen people to Texas as America and the world is destroyed in return for a hit record. No, really:

Marching on toward Zion, marching on toward Zion
Under the X in Texas is where you'll find me, it's where I'll be,
Singing out the songs, warning the world of the perils to come…
And one by one the states will know as they crumble like Jericho, from Canada to Mexico that Texas is the rock to lift you up when the words collide. 

It’s hard to pick just one track of this extraordinary album, which is chock full of apocalyptic visions, hopes, spoken word Bible passages and the valorisation of Texas. Of course, all of this madness means that the album should be unredeemably awful. Indeed, any record that concludes with a  28 minute long track which includes spoken word excerpts from Walt Whitman’s work, Augustine’s Confessions and ends with the lines: “Follow me O Israel into the Promised Land/Follow me over the Jordan across the Rio Grande/Follow me into Texas into the Promised Land/Marching on to Zion with gun in hand” simply has to be terrible. In fact, however, for all its madness, the albumis a stunning achievement. Singer Josh T. Pearson has a voice which sounds like Jeff Buckley mixed with Thom Yorke, while the number of musical ideas flying around creates a dizzying soundscape.  Drowned in Sound named the album as one of the top 50 of the last decade, and the album is regularly identified as one of the best “lost” albums ever. 

The album allows the band to explore in some details some of the ambiguities of the apocalypse. The salvation that is promised can be vaguely threatening: “You can secure your slot/ And fall in rank with the crippled and the faint” sings Pearson “As the saints go marching on toward Zion/With guns in hand”.  On “Down with the Prophets” he engages in the anguished admission of the apocalyptic prophet: “We sing these songs because we have to, not because we want to/Just doing our part trying to feed stubborn horses standing on the lead rope”. 

There are few more bizarre engagements with apocalyptic than this, but it remains one of my favourites. It’s atravesty that despite great reviews, the band disappeared without a trace, although Pearson has resurfaced as a solo artist and drummer Andy Young has more recently worked with Guy Garvey of Elbow. 

Waiting to Hit (Browning, Pearson, Young, 2000)

 

In the morning glow with light so low
the day begins as night shelds her skin.
In the aftermath of the long dark past,
I'm beginning to see the light.
Through drunken days and spinning scenes,
the lifting of weight that God's freedom brings.
Till genius awakes with hungover snakes
And remembers the dreams one more.
Tossed from bed to floor.

Sometime, somewhere just when you think it couldn't get any worse,
It'll hit you unaware and you realise:
It sure as hell ain't gonna get any better.
So tune into the radio and listen to the words we say.
It's gonna get far worse before it gets better.
Tune into the TV show, when we will appear to show you the way.
When host of heavenly Angels takes homeward to the Promised Land.
And the stars did align in nineteen ninety-nine.
We're getting ready for the moment to shine.
With luck, star-struck.

On the front of the storm we shall be born,
Under the red and the blue and the white,
These angels will take flight.

Sometime, somewhere just when you think it couldn't get any worse,
It'll hit you unaware and you realise:
It's gonna get far worse before it gets better.
So turn your heads to the starry skies above,
Give those sore eyes a sight.
When the host of heavenly Angels takes flight
With crippled wings and songs to sing.

Just a stupid ranch hand in a Texas rock band,
Trying to understand God's masterplan.

When the Lord said "Son! Tell the world 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."

Waiting to hit with crippled wings,
Waiting to hit with songs to sing,
Waiting to hit the silver screen,
Waiting to hit the scene.

So we approach the grand conclusion when the world receives its retribution.
On the eve of our destruction, standing at the edge looking over.
Waiting to hit the centre stage at such a golden and tender age,
Shot forth out of the miry clay cuttin' all the corners along the way.
Born in a manger covered in after-birth, we're taking her for all she's worth.
With stars above, lone star below, upon the earth a star is born.

Listen on Spotify: Apopalypse: Apocalyptic Advent Calendar

Buy: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002RC0GT4/ref=dm_dp_trk5?ie=UTF8&qid=1355588115&sr=301-1