(Bedroom Classics/Yep Roc)

www.yeproc.com

Josh Rouse's eighth full-length certainly succeeds in creating another cohesive tableau for the songwriter to wander even further from his Nebraska roots. Working again with long-time producer Brad Jones, Rouse turns here to the same instrumental palette he's worked with since he shed his alt-country cloak with 1972 -- sunny keyboard textures; syncopated guitar rhythms; open double-bass up front in the mix; warm vibraphone tones; jazzy horns and flutes; romantic string sections - and even recorded in Nashville again.

But the similarities end there, as Rouse reconstitutes these familiar entities here into an ode to folk music from Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela and his now-native Spain, where Rouse moved five years ago, and now lives with his Spanish wife. He examined some of these textures on 2006's Subtitulo, and clearly, the life and locale agrees with him, as the Mediterranean sun imbues these new songs with balmy textures and unhurried tempos. That's not surprising on the sultry, Spanish-language hometown homage "Valencia," the breezy rumba "Los Voces," or two covers of songs by Cuban Bola de Nieve. But Rouse also infuses that sangria-and-siestas vibe into straight-ahead pop like "Lemon Tree" and the Civil War-era traditional "Cotton Eye Joe," and does so without sacrificing his career-long chill-out aesthetic.

But from the outset, when the gorgeous jazz-and-countrypolitan-strings instrumental opener "Bienvenido" drifts into the equally enchanting cover of Bola De Nieve's "Duerme" (a rumba transposed to a Joao Gilberto 60s' bossa nova), you know immediately that Rouse has stepped up his game from 2007's perfunctory Country Mouse/City House and made this new tableau his own -- even the dreamy, sweet soul-flavored disc-ender "Don't Act Tough," which is free of any Spanish accents or Latin beats, fits texturally with the rest of the record. Rouse's voice has always been a bit slight (and further lightened by his occasionally clichéd lyrics), but it suits these songs that he sounds like the Boy from Ipanema and even lisps his Spanish in the Castilian fashion.

Mostly, though, El Turista pleases because it doesn't sound like the work of a visiting dilettante, and the Rouse we've known over the years is present throughout. (The one exception, "I Will Live on Islands," hews so closely to Graceland it's practically indistinguishable from Paul Simon's sound.) It's premature to anoint this record a classic (the one-sheet compares it to Graceland, Getz/Gilberto and Nilsson Schmilsson), but it's not too early to move it to the head of the class in Rouse's oeuvre. 

Standout Tracks: "Valencia," "Don't Act Tough" "Lemon Tree" JOHN SCHACHT