By Chris Steffen
allmusic.com
AllMusic: Your previous album captured a particular feeling at a distinct point in time. Was this new project approached from a wider perspective?
Josh Rouse: Honestly, I was uncertain. I had numerous songs and several potential routes, so it took time to decide, "Alright, I'll commit to this direction," regarding both the track selection and the production I'd already begun. I had a larger pool of material than usual, and while the level of focus was comparable, I was unsure which way to proceed.
AllMusic: What ultimately steered you toward the path you chose?
Rouse: The production style on my previous few records leaned heavily on acoustic guitar. So I thought, "Let me try songs that were conceived and written differently and offer something fresh this time." Lyrically, they're brief vignettes, small narratives—definitely a shift from the more intimate, personal record before.
AllMusic: Did that feel natural, or more like slipping into a disguise?
Rouse: At first it felt a bit unusual, but after living with the songs for a few months, I thought, "This works, this is solid." When I make albums, I tend to overload them, then strip things back. This time, everything that remained felt right.
AllMusic: What do you mean by "overload them"?
Rouse: Too many layers, too many instruments, too many sounds—various keyboards, extra parts. I ended up paring it down to a bass-and-drum groove and keeping the vocal upfront. Longer reverb is a feature on this record; I got into those 80s reverbs, which are enjoyable.
AllMusic: And vocoder.
Rouse: Yeah, I'd never used that before. It's fun—it made me smirk, so I thought, "Let's just go with it." It's something you'd hear on a Lil Wayne track, and to me it felt contemporary and gave me a chuckle.
AllMusic: When did you move from "this is amusing" to "I'm putting this on my album"?
Rouse: It's more like, "What do I have to lose, really?" It's not as though I'm selling millions of records. I figure everyone's tastes evolve—what you consider good, what I consider good. I still enjoy many things from my high school days, and some of it I look back on and think, "Wow, I took that seriously once," like 80s metal bands—that stuff was popular in small-town America, where I'm from.
AllMusic: "What do I have to lose" sounds like a liberating mindset.
Rouse: You wonder if your fans will go, "OK, what's this?"—that's already happened to me many times. This is my twelfth album, so I'm not just emerging and being precious about it. I'm having fun writing songs that I hope I'll still like in five years, at least a few of them.
AllMusic: That's an attitude you wouldn't have had at the start of your career.
Rouse: Definitely. When I first started, I was very precious and driven. Even when making the 1972 record and we began adding flutes and saxophones, I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa—I'm not sure about all that." Now, looking back, I love it—I think it's great. I felt the same way about the vocoder or synth sounds and such.
AllMusic: There are also some big saxophone moments here, like "Businessman," a song with a lot going on.
Rouse: It sounds that way, but it's not, really. When I'm singing, there isn't much happening. There were more sounds we added that I had to pull back. I was listening to the latest MGMT album, and I hear that and think, "Wow, they left everything in," which I really like. But I tried to strip it back as much as possible so the song worked. When I first started, I had Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man in mind—some female backing vocals repeating what I say, some synths. Whether they're cheesy or not, I like that. As a kid, I probably wouldn't have liked it.
AllMusic: When you encounter other musicians you admire, do you try to engage with them?
Rouse: I don't say hi. I've done it before, and I learned that most of the time it's just, "Hey, nice to meet you," and that's it. Other times you're better off saying nothing. But I did have a great experience with that recently—back in November, I was playing in Glasgow and Robert Plant came to the show. We actually hung out, and he said, "Hey, I almost recorded one of your songs."
AllMusic: "Almost"?
Rouse: "We were this close to cutting it for the Raising Sand album…" And that sold like five million records. I was like, "Dude, you could have changed my life—I wouldn't be worried about whether I could check an extra bag on the next tour." That was a good experience as far as that goes—him being there and not me going, "Hey, Robert…"
AllMusic: Did living in Spain put you in a different mindset?
Rouse: The first couple of years, I was a bit more snobby when I'd come back to the States—I'd be like, "Look at all the TVs everywhere, media coming at you all the time." There are TVs in Spain, but you get less of that—you don't have a screen constantly selling you something. I don't notice it as much now; so much time has passed. It definitely opened my eyes, and now anything goes.
AllMusic: What's the toughest part about leaving the country?
Rouse: The biggest thing is the loneliness. If you don't speak the language well, you don't understand the inside jokes of the culture, and that can make you feel isolated. I didn't grow up there—it's like if a Spanish person comes here and I reference Welcome Back, Kotter and they don't get it. There are those little things you don't realize are part of everyday life, everyday conversation, that people pick up on. That's what you miss.
