This, honestly, is a tricky review to write.  Mostly by coincidence, I’ve actually met Josh T. Pearson something like four times this year.  I wouldn’t for a second claim that means I know him all that well, as his demeanour is pretty impenetrable, but I do know that he wasn’t in the most amazing frame of mind before this performance.

It’s odd, but that knowledge makes it difficult to actually absorb a performance objectively. When we recorded our Toad Session with him earlier in the day he was as charming and accommodating as he has always been when I’ve dealt with him, but he was feeling ill, and after travelling up from Manchester had already recorded a BBC Radio Scotland session before our own, so he was pretty bloody tired as well.

Had I been entirely without this knowledge I would probably have just sat back and enjoyed the performance – a fantastic one, albeit perhaps a little less electrifying than his mesmerising turn at Homegame this year.

But with this knowledge it was strange to watch him play the intensely personal songs we all know from the awesome Last of the Country Gentlemen, all the while wondering if his mind was really on the material, or if he was just feeling absolutely fucked after a punishing year of touring, in which he has played hundreds of gigs, dozens of festivals and any number of internet sessions for even the most no-mark of bloggers (such as, for example, myself). His between-song chat, despite being as entertaining as ever, only reinforced this because he was clearly not all that happy with his own performance because of his illness.

I did ask him this at the Toad Session itself, and he did suggest that he feels it is time to move on and perhaps leave this material alone for a little.  Because it is beautiful, but it is dark and intense as well, and as such I suppose it must have a natural shelf life, if just for the performer himself, and his ability to engage with the songs in a spirit which will allow him to sing them with the depth, meaning and commitment they require.

Mind you, the other impression gleaned from one successful and one aborted attempt to interview the man is that the emotions confessed in these songs are never really that far from the surface, so no matter how shite he feels, it doesn’t seem that hard for him to drag it all back to the foreground and then out to the audience.

Certainly despite his protestations, this was another great show.  His command of silence exceeds almost anyone else I have ever seen, and the barest brush of the guitar strings is allowed to dissipate out into the air, making it almost impossible to not pay full attention.

Consequently as Woman When I’ve Raised Hell and Sweetheart, I Ain’t Your Christ fill the venue it is a rapt and silent Oran Mor which stares back up at him in silent awe.  Even with the flu his sheer personality fills the place, along with the silences he plays so well, and I suppose that’s how he can switch so swiftly from laughing and joking between songs, to suddenly dipping once more into the heartbreakingly serious music he makes, with the audience and the man himself seemingly oblivious of the tremendous emotional gear-change we’ve all just made.

He’s a curious fellow, that’s for sure.  And possibly Man of the Year for 2o11, in a musical sense.

Josh T. Pearson – Country Dumb

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