Josh Rouse

On his gorgeous new album, Museums and Women, Josh Rouse is part songwriter, part street photographer, an itinerant documentarian traveling the world capturing evocative portraits that reveal not only the rich inner lives of his subjects, but also the tender soul of the man behind the lens.

"I was drawn to these songs because they're so observational," Rouse reflects. "They're full of characters and stories I dreamed up from little moments that sparked my imagination on the road.

" Recorded in Nashville with longtime production partner Brad Jones (Chuck Prophet, Hayes Carll), Museums and Women showcases Rouse at his most hopeful and romantic, balancing casual poetry and wry humor in equal measure as he conjures up a cast full of drifters and dreamers moving through life with quiet satisfaction.

The subjects of these songs are almost always in transit, but never lost; searching, but never desperate; longing, but never lonely.

The music, meanwhile, is often bittersweet, with a gentle, seemingly placid surface that belies the deep well of emotion and memory and desire underneath.

The result is a lush, cinematic exploration of the endless stream of passing strangers who slip in and out of our lives on a daily basis, a professional people watcher's take on the external worlds we carry within, the internal worlds we map onto others, and the real world that lies somewhere in between.

"When I was writing these songs, I was trying to envision the entire scene, to create a fully fleshed out place where I could go while performing the music," Rouse explains. "