Josh Rouse

Brudenell Presents...

With support from - Kathryn Williams

On his gorgeous new album, Museums and Women, Josh Rouse is part songwriter, part street photographer, an itinerant documentarian traveling the world capturing evocative portraits that reveal not only the rich inner lives of his subjects, but also the tender soul of the man behind the lens. "I was drawn to these songs because they're so observational," Rouse reflects. "They're full of characters and stories I dreamed up from little moments that sparked my imagination on the road. At the end of the day, though, it's inevitable that I'm in there somewhere, too." Recorded in Nashville with longtime production partner Brad Jones (Chuck Prophet, Hayes Carll), Museums and Women showcases Rouse at his most hopeful and romantic, balancing casual poetry and wry humor in equal measure as he conjures up a cast full of drifters and dreamers moving through life with quiet satisfaction. The subjects of these songs are almost always in transit, but never lost; searching, but never desperate; longing, but never lonely. The music, meanwhile, is often bittersweet, with a gentle, seemingly placid surface that belies the deep well of emotion and memory and desire underneath. The result is a lush, cinematic exploration of the endless stream of passing strangers who slip in and out of our lives on a daily basis, a professional people watcher's take on the external worlds we carry within, the internal worlds we map onto others, and the real world that lies somewhere in between. "When I was writing these songs, I was trying to envision the entire scene, to create a fully fleshed out place where I could go while performing the music," Rouse explains. "I wanted to make it as real for the audience as it was for me."
Hailed by NPR as "one of contemporary music's most engaging singer-songwriters," Rouse first emerged with his stunning 1998 debut, Dressed Up Like Nebraska, which Billboard proclaimed to be a "dark horse gem." In the years to come, he would go on to release thirteen more critically acclaimed albums, homing in on a warm, ruminative sound that fused elements of vintage folk, roots rock, and AM pop with a distinctly modern and emotionally insightful perspective. Q called his 2003 breakout release, 1972, "the most intimate record of the year," while Rolling Stone dubbed his follow-up, Nashville, "a landmark album," and EW described 2013's The Happiness Waltz as "a big contender for Rouse's best work." After moving to Spain, where he lived for a little more than a decade, Rouse won a Goya Award (the Spanish equivalent of an Oscar) for his song "Do You Really Want To Be In Love," and since returning to the States in 2018 with his wife and children, he's continued to tour and record at a relentless clip, performing everywhere from Glastonbury to Massey Hall. "I don't feel like I have anything to prove at this point in my career," Rouse explains. "I feel very rich in life that I'm still able to continue…