**1/2 Josh Rouse

DRESSED UP LIKE NEBRASKA

(Slow River/Rykodisc)

Twenty-five-year-old singer/songwriter Josh Rouse's debut is squarely in the pop/rock tradition of songs of pleasurable gloominess and jaunty despair, late-night love-lost ruminations fleshed out by high-caloric arrangements (devised with collaborator David Henry), candied with antic coloration (cello, trumpet, slide guitar), and tending to swell into a seductively yearning throb. It sounds great, but the music is doing so much of the work that you can't help being suspicious -- and sure enough, if you peel back the layers, Rouse's songs are a little thin. Not elliptical like, say, Freedy Johnston (another musically appealing depressive), but threadbare. "Happy and willing to die for your love" (from "The White Trash Period of My Life") is the set's keynote lyric; the more colorful imagery suggested by the disc's title never arrives. Still, it's a good musical wallow thoughtfully cobbled with imagination and taste.

-- Richard C. Walls