Review Summary: Let the invasion begin.
Sweden has invaded. While French electro-dance groups and punky, boozing British scumbags have been making a large fuss about their invasion into the American mainstream, those sneaky Swedes have been quietly building up the front, moving towards the obvious goal to make their country as musically reputable as England or the USA. And who could be leading this front I just mentioned? Why, none other than Jose Gonzalez.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jose Gonzalez- In Our Nature
Jose Gonzalez- Vocals, Guitars
Y. Nagano- Backing Vocals
E. Bodin- Percussion
H. Wirenstrand- Synthesizer
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jose Gonzalez has never been about piling it on. While, say, an Animal Collective song may have thirty different sounds and mind-bending, extremely scary synthesizer breaks, a Arcade Fire song may feature twelve drummers and fifty violinists (obvious exaggeration), or a Modest Mouse song may have bubbly trumpets accenting the already layered guitar-rock song, the Swedish-based Gonzalez has been perfectly content with softly strumming an acoustic guitar, singing quietly in his heavily accented English. And while Gonzalez isn’t the first to offer such a stripped-down blend of music in this new generation of indie rock, he’s one of the first to gain heavy attention for it. And this publicity he’s been receiving is the only reason he’s even somewhat comparable to these previously mentioned indie greats. Sadly, the man is still mostly known for his (excellent) cover of electro-dance group The Knife’s “Heartbeats”, along with other equally great covers of songs such as Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. Unfortunately, none of the songs found on his newest album, In Our Nature, are as good as the songs he has covered. But that’s not saying this is a bad album—don’t worry men, Sweden’s still invading.
What In Our Nature does offer is the softest, yet most active set of tracks released since Bjork’s Medulla, and even that instrumentally-bare album has more going on than this one. The first track, titled “How Low”, is simply Gonzalez scraping away at his guitar, giving a metallic, empty sort of sound that makes everything sound layered and messy, and then you realize that the little perfections—from his slapping the fret board harder than normal to produce a percussive sound, and the occasional pop and crackle in the production—it gives everything a wholesome sound. It’s like a house you’ve lived in for fourteen years: the paint may be peeling; the carpets may need shampooed, but its home, and nothing could replace the emotional feeling you feel for it.
Lyrically, Gonzalez improves rather drastically. While Veneer was cryptic and forgiving, In Our Nature is—dare I say it—much more mature lyrically. In Our Nature’s lyrical topics mainly have to do with grittiness of war, from the descriptive and haunting “How Low” to the title track, with its mumbled repetitiveness. Yeah, it’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s a heavy improvement over Veneer’s rather simple themes. The best song lyrically, a tuneful, somber tune called “Abram”, takes a potshot at the church, as most obviously shown from the refrain: “Although you mean well most of the time, you made a delusion and created lies within our minds.” It just goes to show that you don’t need to be a metaller to reject religion.
There are some missteps, as there are in most albums, but they are few and very numbered. “Cycling Trivialities” is waaaaay too long for a Jose Gonzalez song, clocking in at eight dragging minutes with absolutely no extra instrumentation besides the standard bass, acoustic guitar, and Gonzalez’s wobbly, mumbling words. And, again, the cover of trip-hop legends Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” is the highlight of the album, with its low, driving beat, which is just so much more different than the other pure folk that’s found here, which shows that Gonzalez needs to grow as a singer-songwriter to match the quality of the songs that he covers. Repetiveness is the main problem here, as there is just so much you can do with an accent and an acoustic guitar. In Our Nature is thankfully short, at only 34 minutes, but it doesn’t take away the fact you’re listening to ten different versions of the same tune.
Overall, Jose Gonzalez doesn’t stray too far away from the wistful folk that made him an indie star, and he delivers an album that basically sounds the same as his previous one. But the most endearing quality is that In Our Nature doesn’t care that it sounds so similar to its younger brother, because Veneer’s mission wasn’t to provide a musical statement for entire country. In Our Nature’s mission is. Let the invasion begin.
