Josh Rouse at Northshore Performing Arts Center

I can’t help it, I love Josh Rouse’s dreamy twangy pop music. Yeah, it’s chick music, yeah, it’s not particularly demanding or edgy, yeah, it’s the kind of stuff you play on the stereo while you’re cooking breakfast for the object of your affections after you woke up that first time and everything was better than okay. You know what I mean.

But at last night’s show I was oh so bored. It wasn’t the music, which had that perfect shiny wet sound. And while the band was playing, it was all fine. Maybe the hall was to blame? The formal, barely half full Northshore Performing Arts Center in Bothell sounds beautiful, but it was too big for the band. And half the crowd looked like they’d signed up for a season of suburban entertainment and didn’t know what they were in for. “Honey, who’s this Josh Rouse character on our season tickets for tonight?” Maybe Josh Rouse is a house party kinda guy, the kinda guy who’s funny with a cocktail in hand, charming when he’s sitting next to you on the picnic bench in the backyard, but not a stage performer.

The band had no patter, no story telling, no spark without the music. They didn’t seem to have a lot going on between themselves either, so between each perfectly rendered tune was a dead space when Josh Rouse switched guitars, or the drummer messed with something, or, oh, I don’t know. I was bored, sadly, and as much as I do love, more often than I admit, to fill my ears with sunny melodic pop, I’d have done better to lie on the couch with the stereo on while watching the sky go black.

The opening act, Jason Collett, was more entertaining. Jason Collett is adorable and funny but I didn’t love his music. I did like the sound of his voice, he does cute squeaky things with it, and he’s a little PG-13 and talky. The tracks on his site – with a band – sound better than he did live, solo there wasn’t enough to make me fall for him – and I was quite willing.

This sounds like I didn’t particularly enjoy myself. It’s always good to get out and wow, the sound in that hall is terrific, and as I said, I love Josh Rouse’s music and it was lovely to hear it live. We went to dinner beforehand at a hectic Thai restaurant that was fine, not great, but fine, and I think that’s as good an analogy as any for the show.

[tags]Josh Rouse, Jason Collett[/tags]