They say the true measure of a great song is whether it still sounds as good when you strip the accompaniment down to a solo acoustic guitar. They, of course, are full of shit. This year alone, a bunch of my favorite songs-- Chromatics' "In the City", let alone Lil Mama's "Lip Gloss"-- have been more about texture and rhythm than melody. José González might still be best known for his unplugged cover of the Knife's "Heartbeats", but with this Swedish singer-songwriter, lack of adornment means something different than just showing a song's bones.
In fact, for González's follow-up to debut album Veneer, I hesitate to use the term "singer-songwriter" at all. It used to bother me that the Gothenburg-based artist hadn't written any originals as compelling as his covers, which so far have included not just "Heartbeats" but also Kylie Minogue's "Hand on Your Heart" and Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart". I'm so over it now. While sophomore full-length In Our Nature still only rarely nears the songwriting brilliance of González's fantastic cover selections (an unfair standard!), that's clearly not the game he's playing best.
On In Our Nature, González takes the basic elements of an acoustic troubadour's craft and explores their possibilities, not only as ingredients of songs, but as sounds to be enjoyed in their own right. A stray breath, the buzzing of guitar strings, a hand scraping across the frets: these are all shades in González's palette. The biggest embellishment you're likely to hear is a metronomic foot-tap, subtle hand percussion, or a backing vocal by Little Dragon's Yukimi Nagamo. Where the Knife's "haunted house" sound is informed by minimal techno, González's lo-fi acoustic guitar music could be dubbed "minimal folk."
Or "minimal folk-pop," if you prefer. Like British folkie John Martyn on 1973's Solid Air, González has a reassuringly airy voice and the intricate finger-picking of a leftfield jazz aficionado. Plus, there are plenty of hooks in his spare melodies and still sparer lyrics. Whether a political statement, a musing on sin, or a stark depiction of a troubled relationship, first video selection "Down the Line" is entrancing beyond its slightly distorted strums, droning treble strings, or clicking percussion. "It's all about compromising," González sighs into what he calls "the darkness."
The fire and brimstone from classic American folk (and its folk-rock inheritors) is often detectable behind González textures. For all its sleepy off-mic mumbling and uncluttered finger-picking, "Abram" reads as a shot against religion: "Even though you mean well (well, most of the time)/ You made a delusion and created lies in our minds." And from the first breaths of bloodstained opener "How Low", In Our Nature is haunted by the ugliness of war. With one of the more memorable, faster-paced guitar figures on the album, second video selection "Killing for Love" could be an indictment of blood lust, if not the lust in our hearts.
The preaching occasionally turns slightly pat. The title track trudges a bit, and its repetitions ("It's in our nature," or, "Put down your gun") don't make the dark theme more arresting. Closer "Cycling Trivialities" shows González at his most vulnerable, with a stream of plangent notes bubbling out from an unaccompanied guitar, and while the song's sense of futility-- capping off an album heavy with the stuff-- gets pretty powerful, an extended outro and the awkward title phrase itself find González in a rare moment of unwarranted excess.
Nevertheless, even the least striking tracks have their electrifying moments: Take "Time to Send Someone Away", which sets weary defiance over handclaps, or "Fold", which casts up a gentle plea against the better of its own hard-earned wisdom. Opening with a yawn, "The Nest" adds the bagpipe-like keyboard playing of Håkan Wirenstrand before ending in the hiss of amplified dead air.
Like its predecessor, In Our Nature is a collection of sparse acoustic recordings. But it's a more thoughtful and atmospheric work than either Veneer or last year's Stay in the Shade EP-- one that suggests González has enough talent to make good on the lofty Pink Moon comparisons. And for the first time, the cover-- an urgent acoustic rendition of Massive Attack's "Teardrop"-- isn't even the album's best track.
