josh rouse
I’ve been trying to think how to best describe Josh Rouse’s latest LP Subtitulo. You see, it’s good but it’s also formulaic. And my music-nerdness insists I dislike for this reason but, at the current moment, rouse’s very good formula is winning out over my unqualified snobbery. I mentioned to Bryan that one of the Bill Withers-esque songs on thealbum is destined to appear in a Gap commercial. Bryan’s response: “I think he’s been hoping for a gap commercial for a long time… this is like 6 albums or something and he’s still playing for crap small venues”. This is true as I did see him over at Neumo’s on the weekend. And wow, there were some superfans there.

To be a bit lazy, I’m just going to steal Amazon’s dead-on review of the disc because it’s so damn satisfying to read. You should also note that It Looks Like Love is one of those Withers-esque songs I was talking about…

Subtítulo, so named because the artist has curled himself up in the culture of his adopted country, Spain, is as stuck in the ’70s as anything he’s produced, only this time he’s sprinkled on Basque-country flavoring. Quiet Town paints so pretty a picture of sleepy romantic Euro villa life that it comes across as a kick in the shin to daydreaming suburbanites; Summertime effectively recreates long days by Grandma’s kidney-shaped pool; It Looks Like Love cops a Seals & Crofts soft-rock creaminess that goes down so easy it really has no business presenting itself in this decade. [...] Pick an adjective to attach to this disc, and invariably you’ll come up with a tepid one like “nice.” But you’ll mean it in the best way possible.

josh rouse - quiet town MP3
josh rouse - summertime MP3

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