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If you want something for your big holiday party that will be familiar to all your guests, The Holiday Sounds of Josh Rouse is not at all what you're looking for. The melodies have a warm, comfortable tone, and the friendly, slightly dusty sound of Rouse's voice is a fine complement to the primarily acoustic arrangements, with Brad Jones' keyboards and vibraphone and James "Hags" Haggerty's bass earning special kudos. "Red Suit" imagines a laid-back Santa kicking back during the off-season, "Easy Man" has a breezy, jazz-infused feel as Josh goes with the Yuletide flow, "New York Holiday" celebrates a big-city Christmas with a piano line that nods to Vince Guaraldi, and "Heartbreak Holiday" offers sympathy to those who have been recently dumped while the rest of the world celebrates.
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The Holiday Sounds is a collection of short stories of people's lives told with wit, compassion, and a keen eye, and though they all have something to do with common late-December events, they're smart and engaging enough to work no matter what month it may be. Instead of trying to bend his soulful and rootsy approach to covers of "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" or "Silent Night," Rouse has written nine tunes that allow him to do what he does well - and they just so happen to be about the Christmas season. It’s a shame that The Holiday Sounds takes so long to get to the good stuff – a bit less dreamy noodling and a couple more tracks along the lines of the latter half would have elevated it into a Christmas cracker.What does a Christmas album sound like? Whatever you're imagining, it probably isn't a lot like Josh Rouse's first holiday-themed release, 2019's The Holiday Sounds of Josh Rouse, and that's one of the best things about it. Things finally pick up with the sweet, foot-tapping “Sleigh Brother Bill”, the jaunty “Lights of Town”, with its bass intro that echoes “My Baby Just Cares for Me”, and “Heartbreak Holiday”, a sparkling, cheerily up-tempo number about a lonely man spending Yuletide in the big city, ruefully musing that “tis the season to be blue”.
Sunny opener “Mediterranean X-Mas”, the lead single, is barely two minutes in length, grooving along dreamily wishing everyone a “Feliz Navidad”, before “Red Suit” turns Santa Claus into an urbane, Ray-Bans-wearing and slightly creepy figure who silently slinks around the neighbourhood with the aid of a GPS while you're fast asleep.Īn easy listening feel is draped across the album, thematically as well as stylistically (it's also given a bit of a nod in the record’s retro cover) – particularly when the chilled-out narrator of “Easy Man” chooses the path of least resistance in a cheeky tale of “hanging out with the in-laws/They’re really not so bad”. It's pleasant enough but, unfortunately, the first handful of tracks really noodle along, pianos a-tinkling everywhere, which means the album takes much too long to get going. The Holiday Sounds of Josh Rouse is a pretty slight affair, clocking in at just over half an hour, filled with dreamy, laidback vocals, jazzy elements and a dash of retro charm.