by Peter Moore

Number Ten – Josh Rouse: Quiet Town

Without wishing to put any French, Italian, German, Polish or any other noses out of joint, I’d like it put down on record forever more that, in my opinion, Spain is the most wonderful continental country of all.

Perhaps it shares with Britain a sense of fallen empire; a glorious past which only continues to live in the popular imagination of dreamers and romantics. Whether this is true or not, nobody can deny that there is something deeply infectious about Spain and its inimitable, endearing, and occasionally brutal culture, which has continued to burn in the imagination of artists and travellers for centuries.

George Orwell was one of a catalogue of writers drawn to Spain, as it tumbled into political turmoil and then civil war during the 1930s. His gritty account of the fighting and corrupt politics of the conflict was documented in his book, Homage to Catalunya, from which, this revealing passage is well worth quoting:

“With my discharge papers in my pocket I felt like a human being again, and also a little like a tourist. For almost the first time I felt that I was really in Spain, in a country that I had longed all my life to visit. In the quiet back streets of Lerida and Barbastro I seemed to catch a momentary glimpse, a sort of far-off rumour of the Spain that dwells in everyone’s imagination. White sierras, goatherds, dungeons of the Inquisition, Moorish palaces, black winding trains of mules, grey olive trees and groves of lemons, girls in black mantillas, the wines of Malaga and Alicante, cathedrals, cardinals, bull-fights, gypsies, serenades–in short, Spain. Of all Europe it was the country that had had most hold upon my imagination. It seemed a pity that when at last I had managed to come here I had seen only this north-eastern corner, in the middle of a confused war and for the most part in winter.”

Seventy years later, the American singer-songwriter Josh Rouse became another to succumb to Iberia’s mysterious charm. A successful musician based in Nashville with a number of critically claimed released behind him, the first mention of Spain crept into the title track of his 2003 release, 1972.

‘The Spanish girl with the tattoo, working nights at the drive through,’ the lyric ran, in a song that went on to hint strongly of marital infidelity. Whatever the truth, barely a year later Rouse had left Nashville and begun a new life with his Spanish girlfriend in the village of Altea on the eastern Spanish coast, just to the north of Valencia.

Quiet Town is the lead single of Rouse’s first ‘Spanish’ album, Subtitulo. The lyrics of which speak for themselves.