One genre that dominated the dial was Southern Californian Rock. The AM stations played hits by Abba, the Bee Gees and Elton John, but also extended pieces like Harry Chapin's Taxi and Don McClean's American Pie. For me, this span ran from 1971-1979, and so I cut my teeth on a catalog alternately cheesy and adventurous. I refer to the formative period that runs from age 4, when you first become aware of music, to about age 12, where the age of musical obsession and discerning choices begins (for those so inclined). It's all nice, but give me New York or Hotlanta, thanks.I grew up on AM radio in the seventies. "My Love Has Gone", which opens "Side B", echoes the bitterest Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac. With a Pernice Brothers-sharp melody and swooning strings, "Streetlights" will please fans of 1972 (the album or the year). While today's best-publicized mtvU acts act like imitating the early '80s is revolutionary, Manilow-tinged ballad "Middle School Frown" mentions "new wavers" and "punk rock stars" in the curmudgeonly context they deserve. On pedal steel-drenched opener "It's the Nighttime", his awkward school/fool rhyme is only grating upon close listens, and his playful come-on about wanting to "try on your clothes" would be kinda cute even in the Bible Belt. Sleepy acoustic closer "Life", harmonicas aspiring toward Saint Neil, will erase only the most superficial post-breakup hangovers with "Just sing a song and let love shine/ 'Cause that's just life." Try Love's "Everybody's Got to Live" instead.Īs with past Rouse efforts, Nashville is always pleasant, if unexceptional.
If there's a single reason Rouse has never broken the David Gray barrier, it's his often-inconsequential observations. But the most Rouse does lyrically with his urgent-sounding arrangement is: "Put on your hat, because the forecast is rain clouds." The album's finest track, "Winter in the Hamptons", hews closely to the Smiths classic "Bigmouth Strikes Again", placing handclaps and an infectious "ba ba" chorus atop chiming acoustic guitars and a bass line that nearly quotes the vocal hook from Edwyn Collins' "A Girl Like You". Rouse's 2003 soft-rock concept album 1972 bared his Bread fetish Nashville returns to the 80s pop undercurrents that emerged on his 2002 breakthrough, Under Cold Blue Stars.
His latest is his second titular nod to Music City, USA- 2000's Home was recorded shortly after Rouse moved there- and arrives following the itinerant Nebraska native's move to Spain, where fragile Tweedy/Adams vocals are presumably less ubiquitous. On each of the three albums since his alt-country debut, Dressed Up Like Nebraska, singer/songwriter Josh Rouse has fashioned urbane light-pop window treatments for yuppie denizens of the new Nashville. The city of Nashville has long since morphed from countrypolitan to Cosmopolitan, with ritzy suburbs named Brentwood, nightlife beyond the Bluebird Café, and Tim McGraw/Nelly collabs. Hell, The Nashville Network itself is no more: TNN became Spike, which is good for watching Deep Space Nine reruns while playing hooky in a Dayquil daze but little else. The Nashville of The Nashville Network is no more.
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