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Under Cold Blue Stars Josh Rouse Slow River Records, 2002
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As a pop album with a soul, Josh Rouse's Under Cold Blue Stars confronts the beaten boundaries of pop music while comfortably remaining within their confines. Just as his sound is about to dissolve into predictability, Rouse delves confidently into unexplored musical terrain, delivering a collection of 11 songs that embrace a spectrum of musical moods. From the hauntingly spare "Summer Kitchen Ballad" to the jangling "Nothing Gives Me Pleasure" to the frenetic "Feeling No Pain," Rouse's sound is as challenging as it is charming. Rouse does not necessarily accomplish anything really new here. Rather, he reconfigures standard pop devices, stripping the genre of its fluff and cutting to its bare bones. Thus, while Under Cold Blue Stars is not the work of an innovator, his attempt at acquainting pop music with honesty and substance is, for the most part, an encouraging success. In a recent NPR [National Public Radio] interview, Rouse recalled the FM radio of his Nebraska childhood, saturated with Neil Young and Fleetwood Mac. Rouse knows his work well, it seems, as Under Cold Blue Stars plays like a reconciliation between the dreamy levity of Fleetwood Mac's "Gypsy" with the dour minimalism of Neil Young's "Albuquerque." However, while Young, Fleetwood Mac and comparable contemporaries such as Radiohead nail themselves to a definitive sound -- Radiohead's unremitting gloom, for example -- Rouse frolics somewhat drastically from one temperament to the next, defying category at every turn. Interestingly, this schizophrenic approach renders his triumphs just as visible as his failures, yielding a rather didactic statement on the dos and don'ts of pop songwriting. For a younger artist, Rouse often exhibits a notable restraint of his powers, while occasionally letting his abundant energy obfuscate his capacity for melody and pathos. A healthy dose of bleakly spare tracks instills the album with a memorable immediacy and poise, whereas other tracks, such as "Women and Men," embark towards the same kind of promise only to descend into the distasteful pop arrangements that Rouse spends much of his time eluding. Fortunately, such descents occur rarely on Under Cold Blue Stars and the power of other, simpler songs keeps the album confidently afloat. Similarly, Rouse's lyrics are as manic-depressive as his music is restless. At once innocent and unforgiving, Rouse's narrative of love and loss leaves nothing unsaid, documenting the spectrum of the heart from glory to grief and back again. "Nothing gives me pleasure like you do, I've always been the one to follow you" he croons on his way to requited love, only to confess his broken heart just a few songs later, in the vulnerably tender "Ugly Stories:" "Farewell, bye bye, sad look in your eye doesn't mean a thing." Despite his subject, Rouse's language consistently avoids mawkishness and doggerel, articulating desire in words as blunt and raw as Bob Dylan's on his equally forlorn Time Out of Mind. Rouse's best songs do not reveal themselves entirely in the first listen, settling into the consciousness like silt at the floor of still waters. "Christmas With Jesus," the album's best song, slowly peels and pierces the heart, while raw, folkish ballads such as "The Whole Night Through" or "Summer Kitchen Ballad" awaken the mind like sudden rushes of nostalgia. Undoubtedly, Under Cold Blue Stars is the work of an emerging artist, and if Rouse slips into an occasional burst of production overkill, it only serves as a more forceful illustration that a good song invites the listener to participate in its experience, rather than doing all the work itself. Triumphs such as "Christmas With Jesus"
and "Summer Kitchen Ballad" demonstrate a kind of courage
and honesty that surface only on those rare achievements
such as The Bends or Blood on the
Tracks. Those masterpieces execute their power more
consistently and stylishly than Rouse, but, in the end, the
comparisons are not as lofty as they may seem. | April
2002 |
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