Great quote from Laura Barton in today's Guardian as conclusion to a piece about a recent Josh T. Pearson concert. She writes that in her favourite moment in the show, Pearson segued into a cover of the Melodians' song Rivers of Babylon, and restored to it a little of the lyrical grace once stolen by Boney M. This cover version seemed to throw the rest of his performance into a kind of relief, to draw together his own trailing, long-hemmed songs and bind them with this idea of Zion, this embodiment of yearning.
Her reflection on the idea of Zion shows the continued impact of Biblical imagery and ideas today together with an understanding of, in the words of George Herbert, "heaven in ordinairie":
"I thought too about how Zion crops up occasionally in rock'n'roll, in reggae hits and Lauryn Hill songs, as a specific and deliberate reference. "Now the joy of my world is in Zion," Hill sings. But I think we can find it elsewhere, in less obvious places, too: seeping into all those stories of desire and escape and belonging, into all those tales of getting out of town and hitting the road and finding true love, unearthing great passion; into the "wire" and "velvet rims" of Springsteen's Born to Run, or the "honey" of Bob Dylan's I Want You, or Edward Sharpe's plaintive "home is whenever I'm with you"; we find it there, this dirty, commonplace Zion, in all these songs that speak of the great unmeetable yearning of the soul."
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Josh T. Pearson - Sweetheart I Ain't Your Christ.
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