Pearly Gate Music

Available at digital services everywhere.

After a near 10-year hiatus, the extraordinarily talented Zach Tillman returns as Pearly Gate Music, bringing us Mainly Gestalt Pornography. Sometimes conjuring the feeling of a punk rock religious revival in an old-time prairie tent, sometimes stripped down to spare acoustic-guitar-and-lovely-croon, Tillman's music sounds as if it were written and performed by a bedraggled dust bowl poet influenced by whatever popular songs from the poor folk circuit were being sung after dinner in the parlors of his youth — and who somehow managed to supernaturally absorb the sound of Lubbock circa 1955, Laurel Canyon circa 1968 and Berlin circa 1980.

In Tillman's own words, "Mainly Gestalt Pornography is (mostly) love songs written after certain lovers, certain dread, certain visions, certain ecstasies. “I Was a Wand'rer” got written for a shamanic girlfriend. “The Secret, Finally” for a stray kitten. “Like Flowers” was written for my wife and “Ocean's Song” for my daughter. Then they all got transformed. Transformed. Shapeshifted. The Egg and the Seed. Now they're all about the same thing: Mainly Gestalt Pornography. I hope that they really do transcend their origins to speak of Love in its highest, most encompassing form. God is Love."