Don't accuse Nashville native Josh Rouse of being a songwriter. Despite a gratifying flurry of attention for his debut, Dressed Up Like Nebraska, which landed him the coveted opening slot on the just-launched Son Volt tour, the shy, bespectacled twenty-five-year-old is wary of any pretense. |

"I'm just a guy who sits on his couch and makes stuff up," he explains, his insouciant Southern accent making his modesty seem more convincing. "I've never really considered myself a songwriter."

His self-deprecating manner aside, Dressed Up Like Nebraska lands Rouse smack-dab in the company of some of rock & roll's contemporary songwriting giants. Think late-model, but still-in-the-Replacements Paul Westerberg crossed with a moody, youthful Tom Petty and, um, Morrissey.

Even though Dressed Up Like Nebraska resounds with parched lyrics and a landscape of American imagery, the songs on the record betray an affinity for Eighties British shoegazer acts like New Order and Echo and the Bunnymen -- bands that Rouse admits made up the bulk of his high-school record collection (His affinity for the Euro-trash genre had Rouse recording a non-ironic cover of one of the Smiths' most delicate -- and most often ridiculed -- ditties, the dolorous "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want," which will appear on a future B-side).

Growing up in a succession of remote outposts -- his father was career military, and his stepfather worked construction projects across the western U.S. -- Rouse wasn't always in the company of kindred spirits. "[The other kids] were listening to Megadeth, and I was listening to New Order," he remembers. "They all thought it was faggy music."

By the time he completed high school, Rouse had attended no fewer than eight different schools. "I didn't like all the moving at the time it was happening, but now it's cool," he reflects, gently embracing the forlorn elements -- travel, heartache, longing and loss -- that seep into his songs. Like so many isolated post-punk teenagers before and since, he bought a guitar. His uncle taught him how to strum along to several Neil Young songs, but Rouse was a restless mimic and anxious to create. "When I started, I learned other people's songs, but they really didn't work. So I made up my own."

The result is an aural interpretation of Rouse's wide-eyed, nomadic adolescence, filtered through an adult's consciousness. This kind of thematic maturity, especially in an era where paint-by-numbers alterna-pop anthems are still in ascendance, makes for a riveting listen. That it comes from one so young -- he looks like he could be a classmate of Isaac Hanson's -- is a revelation.

"We did the record for under five thousand bucks, and it's competing with these hundred-thousand dollar recordings," he muses like the consummate underdog. "I've gotta pinch myself and say, 'Whoa, I'm really doing this now.'"

But true to his wayward past, Rouse isn't content to spend too much time in one place. "I've already got most of the next record written. Wanna hear my demos?"

SCOTT HESS(September 23, 1998)