If José González hadn't come along, the global advertising industry would have invented him. A Swede of Argentine extraction with an affinity for African rhythms, González initially drew worldwide-- or at least World Wide Web-- attention when his acoustic Knife cover turned up on a San Francisco-shot commercial for a Japanese high-def TV. The clip demanded a soundtrack with warmth and genuine feeling, but also a kind of cultural open-endedness, and González's wave-lapping "Heartbeats" fit the bill so well it's hard now to imagine other options ever existed. As one of the Bravia ad's producers prosaically put it, the song "makes you feel nice."
Feeble as that "nice" endorsement rings, it's a pretty accurate description of what González's reedy voice and nylon-stringed guitar do-- both on the two albums under his own name and as part of Gothenburg-based band Junip. I'll toss another faint-praiseworthy- [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| sounding adjective into the ring-- easy. Easy-sounding and easy to like are what Junip are all about on Fields, their first full-length record since González teamed up with keyboardist Tobias Winterkorn and drummer Elias Araya almost a decade ago. The trio put out one EP in 2006, but the project seemed stalled as a sideline to González's flourishing solo career until Junip nonchalantly dropped the surprisingly mature Rope and Summit EP this June.
Fields makes good on R&S's promise with 10 new tracks (plus a reprise of "Rope and Summit") that casually assert there's more than one way to do chillwave-- and it involves psychedelic-space effects ("In Every Direction", "Without You", "Tide"), bossa nova sway ("Always"), economical song structures (pretty much all of them), and high-fidelity recording (ditto). Indeed, Fields is exactly the album you'd expect these guys to make. González's smooth synthesis of classical guitar playing, English folk traditions, and pan-African rhythms have long made clear that he values quality and consistency over risk and innovation and doesn't much care for trends or scenes. And while Junip clearly says "rock" and "band," they perform the same values with brisk professionalism.
So the record sounds contemporary and urbane but isn't stamped with a specific sell-by date or target demographic. Take terrific track "Without You", which relies on the vintage prog charm of whooshing organ builds, an au courant sound among Brooklyn/ Portland/ Montreal's young and false-nostalgic. Junip caps their track at 5:30, at the very point of saturation, the second before "Without You" would have tipped into an overcooked and noodly ELO or Yes tribute. On the other hand, Fields' dearth of surprises makes it a little disappointing even for those with more conventional tastes-- listeners who generally value stuff like quality and consistency more than the shock of the new.
