Josh Rouse

Like novel reading or going down without prompting, enjoying sunny, subtle music is something today’s white boys can’t be bothered with. So let’s hope their girlfriends spin them Nashville, the latest by the least objectionable of pop’s sensitive Joshes, a record of such hazy warmth and pleasantness that the feeling it inspires is as close as art can come to explaining whatever the cat must feel chasing the sun across the carpet. Too often filed away as some No Depression moaner, Rouse is actually after what K-Tel calls the easy sounds of the early ’70s— Bread and the Mac, of course, but also Al Green and Carole King — which means keys and pianos and songs that surprise only in how well they wear. And he knows that groove matters, working a gentle insistence into every track, a riff to nod to or a bass line more soulful than folky rock demands. Mellow enough for make-out sessions but with momentum enough for road trips, Nashville is Rouse’s best bid yet to remind the world that easy listening wasn’t always a synonym for sucks.