A common complaint you’ll hear about bands is that they don’t take chances or try to evolve as musicians. Kind of like when The Strokes released Is This It to critical acclaim, and then tried to precisely recreate it with Room on Fire. If there’s one thing I’m sure of about Josh Rouse, it’s that you’ll never hear that complaint.
I’ve been a fan of Josh Rouse since he released Home back in 2000 and people cooler than me have been a fan since his debut, Dressed Up Like Nebraska, in 1998. What I’ve always admired about Rouse is his willingness to take chances. His early work was fairly straightforward singer-songwriter fare and evolved with the excellent, poppier Under Cold Blue Stars in 2002. Rouse took a right turn in 2003 and released a 70’s inspired album of soft rock tunes called 1972 (not my favorite, but lauded nonetheless). For his next trick, Rouse released his most mature-sounding album with 2004’s Nashville.
But lately, Rouse has been tinkering with Spanish-inspired tunes and has fully immersed himself in his new hometown of Valencia, Spain. Enter his latest 4 song EP, Valencia. Someone has taught him Spanish, and he’s gone ahead and laid down a couple tracks en Espanol, even doing that weird authentic lisp thing with his S’s, so words like Valencia sound like Valenthia. Pretty fanthy.
It’s a nice little EP and you’ve got to admire Rouse for taking some chances and keeping things fresh. I look forward to the full album release in early 2010.
You can stream the entire EP here and judge for yourself. Or try the sample track below.
