最近点播的用户: Weti86 (7分钟前)

Josh Rouse, born in 1972, released a sunbaked album named after that year. It turned out to be prescient nostalgia. Since that mellow, much-acclaimed record, similar blue-eyed soul and knowing but never smart-ass West Coast soft-rock has moved from chronically unhip to only-slightly-ironically in vogue. The ‘70s singer-songwriter thing has been refracted through everything from Dionysian dance samples to the Scissor Sisters’ treacly retreads, from the Guilty Pleasures compilations to the re-imaginings of newcomers The Magic Numbers. If the notion was then a new direction for Rouse after the raggedy Dressed Up Like Nebraska (’98), and spare, introspective Home (’00) and Under Cold Blue Stars (’02) (not forgetting the collaborative EP with Lambchop‘s Kurt Wagner, Chester), you’d have to say he’d be savvy to stick with it now. On Nashville, he does and he doesn’t. This lovely set of songs is clearly au fait with the oeuvres of Bread, America and Carly Simon. But while some numbers borrow their blissed-out glow, others re-introduce the troubled heart which stoked Rouse’s earlier albums. His personal life has seen flux. The soul is skinny-ribbed and of pasty, stoner complexion. It’s whispered, not wailed. Brad Jones’ production is again deft, with a ruthless smoothing of edges which will have you recalling names you’d - for better or worse - forgotten. Let’s get them out of the way: Lobo (of “Me And You And A Dog Named Boo”, er, fame - his influence, and this isn’t something we get to say often, can be felt everywhere), The Eagles, Gerry Rafferty, Eric Carmen, Randy Edelman, and Boz Scaggs. Lots of Boz Scaggs.