It takes guts to make a genuine solo acoustic troubadour singer-songwriter album. Maybe that seems counter-intuitive\u2014after all, it gives the artist complete control over their creation, and simplifies the production process a lot\u2014but the reality is that when it\u2019s down to just you, an acoustic guitar, and a microphone, there\u2019s nowhere to hide. You absolutely have to write well, play well, and sing well; if any one of these elements falls short, the whole thing collapses under its own weight.<\/p>\n
Veneer<\/i> does not collapse under its own weight; it stands tall and proud even with all of the elements that make it distinct and different.<\/p>\n
Jos\u00e9 Gonz\u00e1lez is the son of Argentine parents who emigrated to Sweden two years before he was born in 1978 to escape the repressive regime that had taken over their homeland. As a teenager and college student he played bass and guitar in local punk and indie-rock bands. It was while enrolled in a Ph.D. program that he began crafting the songs on this, his solo debut, a literal bedroom album recorded at home with just an acoustic guitar and his voice. After self-releasing a single, he was signed by Imperial Records, becoming their first official recording artist. The album ended up charting across much of Europe in 2003-04, and was released in America two years later, further fueled by song placements on television dramas The O.C.<\/i> and Friday Night Lights<\/i>.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not hard to understand why these songs caught the ears of television producers; its very spareness and intensity gives Veneer<\/i> a strikingly cinematic feel. One of the reasons the music here is so evocative is that Gonzalez chooses to emphasize his intricate, forceful guitar work over his voice. His playing shows a strong classical influence while nimbly shifting between strummed rhythm guitar and plucked leads; meanwhile, on the vocal side he rarely enunciates, so that his singing often comes across more as pure vocal sound than as narrative.<\/p>\n
The other primary characteristic of Veneer<\/i> is that it\u2019s intimate. Across 11 songs and just 31 minutes\u2014most of these tightly-constructed tunes fail to break the three-minute mark\u2014it feels like you\u2019re sitting in a room that\u2019s just big enough to have a pleasant, shimmery echo to it, with the performer and no one else. That sense of immediacy, coupled with the rhythmic intensity of Gonzalez\u2019s playing, is distinctive and at times nearly hypnotic.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a challenge to pick out highlights on an album this sonically consistent and lyrically abstract, but here are a few. \u201cRemain\u201d features a steady refrain and more typical pop structure and dynamics, including a solo \/ bridge section where his playing gets even more intricate and intense. The resonant \u201cDeadweight On Velveteen\u201d starts out spare and calm, easing in for a full minute before Gonzalez\u2019s vocals begin, but then moves into his more typical thrumming, churning approach. And \u201cHints\u201d offers especially evocative acoustic riffing, punctuated with hand slaps on the guitar body for percussion.<\/p>\n
Overall, there\u2019s a spectral quality to these songs. The sense that conjuring an atmosphere was his goal, rather than telling stories, is further accentuated by the album\u2019s minimalist packaging. The \u201clyric sheet\u201d consists of a pair of densely-packed, small-fonted paragraphs, two undifferentiated blizzards of words placed down low on the inside front and inside back covers of the booklet, presented as if they were an afterthought. In the end, in contradiction to the bold precision of Gonzalez\u2019s playing, his songs emerge as impressionistic miniatures, conveying only hints of meaning amidst their splashes of instrumental color, simultaneously in focus and out of it.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to appreciate why Gonzalez has earned a loyal following and numerous song placements; there is a visceral charisma to his presentation and he\u2019s a hell of a guitar player. At the same time, it seems clear that he\u2019s one of those artists I\u2019m going to end up respecting more than enjoying; there\u2019s just not enough meat on the narrative bones of these songs for a listener like me, who\u2019s at least as interested in storytelling as atmospherics. Regardless of your own preferences, Jose Gonzalez\u2019s Veneer<\/i> is well worth checking out; it\u2019s an undeniably compelling listen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":28417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7772],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46289","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jose-gonzalez","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46289"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}