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Its message is backed up by a sprightly arrangement which does a decent job of channeling the Congolese proto- rumba that inspired it. “I Will Live On Islands”, meanwhile, narrates the tale of a man convicted of a crime, imagining a future beyond prison walls. “Sweet Elaine” is a love song happy to occupy the here and now. “Valencia” is a joyful paean to the town that Rouse now calls home. Remembering, of course, takes place in the present, and there is plenty of the present here too. This is true also of Rouse’s unexpected and unexpectedly moving version of the old folk standard “Cotton Eye Joe”, which evokes Nina Simone’s slow and sensual take of the song on her 1959 album At Town Hall. There is a shift in the register of authenticity in these tracks, from actual lived experience to sincerity of expression. Unlike 1972, this is a past the singer didn’t live. On a more poetic level, the foreignness of the past is manifest in the use of African and Latin American musical references. Rouse returned to the US to record the album in Nashville with his erstwhile producer Brad Jones. Hartley’s The Go-Between, the past, for Rouse, is another country. Throughout there is the lost summer haze of classic bossa nova and Latin-inspired easy listening music.Īs in L.P. Cuban music is another influence, reflected in the inclusion of two covers of songs associated with Cuban singer-pianist Bola de Nieve, “Drume Mobila” (here “Duerme”) and “Messié Julián” (“Mesie Julian”). “I Will Live On Islands” was apparently inspired by The Roots of Rumba Rock, an anthology of Congolese music. On the new album, there is the additional element of ranging and arranging across the musico-geographical spectrum. Rouse has done this before, with Subtitulo (2006) and She’s Spanish, I’m American (2007), the latter recorded with his then-girlfriend (now wife) Paz Suay. As the title suggests, a number of the tracks bear Spanish titles or are sung in Spanish. True to form, El Turista takes as its themes home, the exotic, and the past, folding the three into each other for a 10-track set of hazy summer pop. This is a man who can make a song about the forecast of rainy weather (“Winter in the Hamptons”, from Nashville) glow with a warm fuzziness that only remembered summers have. Even more than an era, it is a season that Rouse’s sound constantly evokes, the sound of summer. Home is a time as much as a place for Rouse, as his lovely, lovingly crafted album 1972 proved in 2003. The titles of his albums tell a large part of this dialectic between movement and stasis: Dressed Up Like Nebraska (1998), Home (2000), Nashville (2005), Country Mouse City House (2007). Rouse himself has called a number of places home over the years, both in the USA and in Spain, where he relocated in 2005. Yet Rouse’s music emphasizes the pleasures of settling as much as travel. Summer is at hand, and a cool evening listen to El Turista will help make grilling burgers in the back yard seem as luxuriant as a night on the Mediterranean coast.El Turista is an appropriate title for a Josh Rouse album, given the Nebraska-born singer’s penchant for moving around from one place to another. He's now a beachcomber on the sunny shores of Spain, in keeping with the rest of El Turista's keenly relaxed feel.ĭon't concern yourself too much with the questions surrounding Rouse's globe-trotting musical matrix. But ol' Joe has hung up his clogging shoes on this one. The words reflect subtle wonder ("Where do you come from, where do you go, what you been doin'?") until the song reveals itself as the folk/country staple Cotton Eyed Joe.
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The big modification, though, comes late on El Turista, when Rouse sings in English over a jazzy, breezy strain of guitar and percussion. Unless one is versed enough in Spanish to detect modifications in the lyrics, we'll never know. I'm not sure why Rouse and Jones give themselves songwriting credits along with the tune's original composer, Cuban pianist Armando Orefiche. The song comes from the '60s repertoire of famed Cuban singer-pianist Bola de Nieve, but on El Turista it emits sunny bossa nova cool from the Gilberto school along with a faintly retro American halo, mostly through use of Rhodes-style keyboards and Hammond organ by longtime Rouse ally Brad Jones. The feel is similarly chic on the Spanish-language Mesie Julian. For the duration of the song's 31/2 minutes ( Lemon Tree could have run twice that without growing stagnant), the subtle beat rules. "It's a long walk home, but I have found my beat," Rouse sings.