| Allmusic |
 Josh Rouse has never stayed in one place for very long, but El Turista -- his third album as a Spanish citizen -- suggests he isn’t leaving the Mediterranean anytime soon. “I’ll send you postcards, boys!,” he sings during “I Will Live on Islands,” one of the five songs to feature English lyrics. Roughly half of El Turista is performed in Spanish, and far more than that bears the country’s influence, from the strum of Rouse’s flamenco guitar to the relaxed, siesta-worthy pitch of his voice. Rouse is still a traveler at heart, though, and he samples from several different cultures throughout the album, often devoting entire tracks -- including the instrumental “Bienvenido,” which opens the disc -- to his fascination with Brazilian traditions. Bossa nova and tropicalia are the major players, but Rouse even attempts several samba numbers with moderate success, all the while dressing up his songs in familiar layers of strings, harmonies, and minimalist piano chords. The result is a globe-trotting pop album that sounds like nothing he's attempted before, yet still retains enough of his signature arrangements (courtesy of Brad Jones, producer of 1972, Nashville, and Subtitulo, who reprises that role here) to make Rouse’s multi-ethnic transformation a believable one. El Turista takes some getting used to, perhaps, but it’s a solid piece of work....full text |
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| Popmatters |
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. Yet Rouse’s music emphasizes the pleasures of settling as much as travel. Rouse himself has called a number of places home over the years, both in the USA and in Spain, where he relocated in 2005. 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). Home is a time as much as a place for Rouse, as his lovely, lovingly crafted album 1972 proved in 2003. Even more than an era, it is a season that Rouse’s sound constantly evokes, the sound of summer. 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.
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. As the title suggests, a number of the tracks bear Spanish titles or are sung in Spanish. 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. On the new album, there is the additional element of ranging and arranging across the musico-geographical spectrum. “I Will Live On Islands” was apparently inspired by The Roots of Rumba Rock, an anthology of Congolese music. 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”). Throughout there is the lost summer haze of classic bossa nova and Latin-inspired easy listening music....full text |
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| Filtermagazine |
| Something about this isn’t right. Josh Rouse’s previous two albums were delightful slabs of wide-eyed “thank you, ma’am” song-craftery that could have grated in their earnest angle if they weren’t so damn wonderfully executed. And this starts like a dream. “Bienvenido” is two minutes of instrumental lounge club xylophones, Rachmaninov piano and swirling strings. It’s perfect, which is probably why the rest fails to enrapture as past efforts have. There’s nothing wrong with Rouse himself, and his decision to do originals and covers is a pleasant premise. Plus, his voice is still as gentle as ever, the music a mix of quirk and charm, but the decision to sing in Spanish for parts highlights a clash between his ultimately thin and delicate voice and the soul inherent in outspoken Latin rhythms. This is merely alright, but it will surely need to burn slower to penetrate the heart. In the history of Rouse’s discography, past albums had done so instantaneously. Let’s hope this tourist heads back home very soon....full text |
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