Listen to Josh Rouse’s Lovely Cover of Lindsey Buckingham Hit “Trouble”

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Listen to Josh Rouse’s Lovely Cover of Lindsey Buckingham Hit “Trouble”

Veteran singer-songwriter Josh Rouse is getting into “Trouble” today (Aug. 9), releasing a winning acoustic take on Lindsey Buckingham’s 1981 solo hit on Friday via Yep Roc Records. The standout track from the former Fleetwood Mac guitarist’s debut solo album Law and Order loses none of its lovesick luster in Rouse’s steady hands.

Though Rouse opts to tone down the original’s punchy Mick Fleetwood drums (and eschews its playful opening count-off entirely), he remains most faithful to Buckingham’s yearning falsetto and layered, breathy background vocals, wiping away the song’s soft-rock production polish by rendering the choruses’ central electric guitar riff on the piano and delivering understated versions of Buckingham’s dual, reverb-drenched solos on his acoustic.

“I picked this song because I bought the 45 when I was 8 or 9 and listened to it over and over,” says Rouse. “Lindsey has a signature sound and mood that revolves around sus chords and arpeggiated finger picking.”

The cover follows Rouse’s “I Miss You,” a new collaboration with Grammy winner Tim Fagan that Rouse recorded in his home studio and released in July. The warm and upbeat new single was the first we’d heard from Rouse since he put out Love in the Modern Age last April, an uncharacteristically synth-driven outing Paste contributor Ben Salmon praised as “intoxicating in an un-bummed-out Beck’s Sea Change sort of way.”

Listen to Rouse’s “Trouble” cover and revisit a 2013 performance by the artist from the Paste archives below.

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