- Critic score
- Publication
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Nashville validates the promise Rouse has exhibited since Dressed Up Like Nebraska, encompassing a gift for emotional detail and a fondness for simple, unadorned lyrics. It's an understated, impeccably played collection of heartfelt tunes about a time and place that can never be returned to.
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Somebody will really have to pull off a miracle to top Nashville as far as intelligent, honest and entertaining guitar pop goes in 2005. Or any other year.
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Entertainment WeeklyPersistently gorgeous. [25 Feb 2005, p.102]
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As with past Rouse efforts, Nashville is always pleasant, if unexceptional.
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UncutIf you liked 1972 in 1972, or liked '1972' in 2003, you'll find yourself swimming with this. [Album of the Month, Mar 2005, p.90]
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Rouse's primary gift remains his easy-flowing melodies, which are coaxed along by his cherubic rasp.
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MojoLooting a Smithsy guitar line for Winter In The Hamptons or aping Steve McQueen-era Prefab Sprout on My Love Has Gone momentarily lifts Rouse's gloom, but it is scant relief from the stillness at Nashville's core. [Mar 2005, p.106]
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Rouse’s ambiguity and storytelling, so strong on Under the Cold, coupled with the quirky pop pastiche that found it’s backbone on 1972, is what his latest effort is all about.
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Q MagazineThese are great songs, regardless of categorisation. [Mar 2005, p.101]
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Nashville is chock full of weeping slide guitar work, soaring harmonies, keyboards, and Rouse’s lonely breath of a voice pushing out from the relatively lush production.
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If you like intelligent song writing with killer sing-along choruses, then you desperately need this album.
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BlenderLyrically, Nashville... is about as insightful as a Hee Haw rerun. But... his warm, reedy voice gives comfort where his words can't. [Apr 2005, p.125]
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Nashville may not have the immediate appeal of 1972, but it is just as strong and, with time, may even be remembered more.
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This is the year’s first great summer album.
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Not as cohesive nor as musically alliterative as [Rouse's] previous breakthrough, 1972, this wistful, meticulous collection of short, (bitter) sweet strummers fits its nostalgic niche like a K-Tel bargain bin 12-inch.
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Under The RadarWhere artists such as Elliott Smith or Jeff Tweedy manage to express their unique creative personalities while they wield the traditional tools of the trade, Rouse's songwriting lacks a similar sense of urgency or drama, too often stumbling into amazingly trite cliches. [#9]
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Paste MagazineDecidedly a pop record. [Apr/May 2005, p.150]
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Nashville is further proof that Rouse is one of the best songwriters of his generation.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 31 out of 35
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Mixed: 3 out of 35
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Negative: 1 out of 35
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Aug 6, 2011
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eirikeNov 26, 2005what a brilliant album - it should really be on all best music of 05 lists !
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MichelleTJun 8, 2005Almost as good as 1972 and different than the albums that came before.