Suburban Sweetheart (not of the rodeo)

Return to the new west (part 3)

Working my way slowly through the Sounds of the New West, Josh Rouse from Track 3 was more of a hit with me than some others to feature, and Uncut regularly featured very nice songs of his (like 'Miracle' and 'Laughing') on their CDs over the next few years, and he also did some nice work with Kurt Wagner of Lambchop (of whom much much more later). His habit of mentioning his influences as The Cure and The Smiths of course was always going to endear him to me as well, although this is tempered by his avowed love of 70s singer/songwriters. I think there is definetely a nice image which captures the spirit of his best music in that strange mix (did Robert Smith ever listen to east-coast 70s guitar stuff, I wonder?), a strange experimental genetic hybrid of laid-back guitar, but with edgy indie sensibilities growling 'louder, harder, wierder' through the twangy haze.



His homepage can be found here and his Myspace page here and a nice clip of him playing 'Miracle' live is below:



However, my favourite song of his by a long shot was 'Sad eyes' from 'Nashville', which apparently was recorded after he broke up with his wife, and a lovely live version can be seen at:



Rouse has certainly produced some very nice songs over the years, although most of his albums I have listened to lean more towards slightly average songs than exceptional ones. His music has definetely picked up a Spanish edge (fair enough as he moved to Spain some years ago) also over the years, which is not my preference at all. One question I will end with though is why, when fate or the fickle marketplace decides which sensitive singer-songwriters will make it big, do people like James Blunt and James Morrison make it big while people like Rouse, who should be able to appeal to much of the same market, fail to?