Now that's something you don't see every day: Xema Fuertes is playing kick drum and hi-hat with his feet while his hands switch from guitar to banjo. Live, Josh Rouse & The Long Vacations, a small band of musicians, showcase their talent more clearly than when recorded with high production values.
Appropriately, early in the set list is ‘Saturday’ from 2005’s ‘Nashville’. An expected selection, after all, it is a Saturday: “I’m playing my guitar in some basement club a thousand miles away,” sings Rouse, “’Cause Saturday I’m on that stage I’m feeling down and blue.”
This is the end of their UK tour, Union Chapel is a lovely place for it to come to a close. Rouse's voice has made it thus far. Well, sort of. He tried 'Directions' last night and couldn't sing it. "Now that I'm an old man with kids my voice has dropped," reveals Rouse, which is funny because from his youthful countenance it seems his balls have only recently dropped. To prove it he does a bar for us.
‘Fine, Fine', a song dripping in bossa nova, represents the new album’s short and lively pop songs. Influenced by the sun, they sound closer to tracks off ‘Valencia – EP’ and 'El Turista' than that of his early stuff.
"You didn't know I could play the drums too," jokes Rouse, not playing the drums, but sat on the kit’s stool unaccompanied. "There's people here and I'm almost forty-years-old," Rouse discloses. Most of the people here are almost forty too, but that's beside the point. Suitably, the next one is '1972', the year Rouse and probably many of his fans were born.
Despite calls for classics like ‘Sad Eyes’ Rouse chooses ‘Diggin’ In The Sand’, a folk song that is free from care in words and music and not in a good way. Fortunately dissatisfaction is cut short by Rouse: "If you'd like to stand up for this last one be our guest". The danceable 'Winter In The Hamptons' spreads its love into 'Love Vibration', and the celebratory stylings of the latter are oddly fitting for the spiritual environment of the chapel.
An uplifting end to a very stimulating show. "Thank you very much London," expresses Josh. No, thank you Mr Rouse.
Words by Jake Young
Photo by Al de Perez
