It\u2019s easy to overlook the fact that, despite only three solo albums in 18 years, Jos\u00e9 Gonz\u00e1lez has packed out distinguished venues from Sydney to Tallinn \u2013 via Berlin, Barcelona and Rio De Janeiro \u2013 and even sold out London\u2019s prestigious, 4000+ capacity Royal Albert Hall a full three years after his last acclaimed collection, 2015\u2019s Vestiges & Claws. He\u2019s earned platinum records in the UK and his Swedish homeland as well gold in Australia and New Zealand. He\u2019s also got some billion streams under his belt, and recent bewildering events have only endeared him further to the public, with his songs providing a consistent source of comfort over the last 18 months, something reflected by a significant rise in those streaming figures. Of course, such matters aren\u2019t things of which Jos\u00e9 himself will remind you: since he first arrived with debut single \u2018Crosses\u2019 back in 2003, both he and his music have remained dependably quiet and unassuming. To underestimate him on account of his modest nature, however, would certainly be regrettable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jos\u00e9\u2019s long-awaited fourth album, Local Valley, provides a welcome reminder of his understated appeal and his singular ability to communicate discreetly, a quality illustrated by the uncommonly effective use of his music during The Last Dance, Netflix\u2019s recent documentary about Michael Jordan. Local Valley also for the first time utilises all three languages Jos\u00e9 speaks, allowing for greater depth and connection to his lineage. Beginning with the sun-dappled \u2018El Invento\u2019, the first song he\u2019s recorded in Spanish (the native tongue of his Argentinian heritage), and ending with the intimate yet rhapsodic \u2018Honey Honey\u2019, it engages in his signature melodic and metrical hypnotism on \u2018Head On\u2019 and \u2018Tjomme\u2019 and showcases his impressive fingerpicking skills on \u2018Valle Local\u2019, while there\u2019s evidence of his love for music from around the world in \u2018Swing\u2019, among other tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s also full of his trademark, bittersweet pastoralism, including \u2018Visions\u2019 and \u2018Horizons \u2013 which, alongside \u2018El Invento\u2019, Jos\u00e9 considers \u201cmy most accomplished songs to date\u201d \u2013 not to mention \u2018The Void\u2019, \u2018Lasso In\u2019, and of course \u2018Line Of Fire\u2019, which continues his tradition of reinterpreting songs, though on this occasion he picks one written for Junip, the band he formed with friends in 1998, which, after two albums, he continues to maintain with co-founder Tobias Winterkorn. That the original version has now been streamed some 60 million times suggests it, like other songs he\u2019s covered, is now part of the songwriting canon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Local Valley, Jos\u00e9 cheerfully acknowledges, \u201cis similar to my other solo albums in sound and spirit, a natural continuation of the styles I\u2019ve been adding through the years both solo and with Junip. I set out to write songs in the same vein as my old ones: short, melodic and rhythmical, a mixture of classic folk singer songwriting and songs with influences from Latin America and Africa. It\u2019s more outward looking than my earlier works, but no less personal. On the contrary, I feel more comfortable than ever saying that this album reflects me and my thoughts right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Certainly, these thirteen meticulously crafted songs sound as confident as anything he\u2019s recorded, and they\u2019re also characteristically rich in compelling detail. This is mirrored in Local Valley\u2019s cover, drawn by his partner, illustrator and designer Hannele Fernstr\u00f6m, who also adds her voice to \u2018Swing\u2019, and for whom \u2018Honey Honey\u2019 was written. While the image appears to depict a sunlit valley filled with animals and plants, there\u2019s typically more to it than meets the eye. The elephant and blackbird at its centre are, Jos\u00e9 reveals, \u201ca nod to \u2018The Rider & The Elephant\u2019, a behavioural psychology model by (NYU psychologist) Jonathan Haidt,\u201d and the textiles of Josef Frank \u2013 the founder of the Vienna School of Architecture who spent later life exiled in Sweden \u2013 provided its stylistic inspiration. The results, meanwhile, are intended to reflect the album\u2019s title, \u201ca metaphor for both humanity stuck here on earth \u2013 our local green valley in a vast, inhospitable universe \u2013 and also for two dogmatic tribes stuck in a state where they\u2019re unable to see things from the others\u2019 perspective, preventing them from establishing a more harmonic state.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Given the intricate, conceptual approach to this artwork, it\u2019s unsurprising to discover that Jos\u00e9 goal was not only simply to create \u201cgood music, beautiful and at times groovy,\u201d but also to be, \u201cat closer glance, intriguing and at times provocative, depending on your worldview.\u201d He\u2019s well placed to delve into complex themes: when not making music or taking care of his daughter, he\u2019s busy investigating topics like effective altruism, secular humanism and ecomodernism, upon which he can sometimes be found expounding amid a likeminded community on Twitter. In fact, he\u2019s often been ahead of the game, musically and sociologically: he studied viruses at Gothenburg University, and his lyrics have frequently addressed previously marginalised themes like the struggle between \u2018fake news\u2019 and science, secularism and the environment. He\u2019s also immersed himself in a dizzying range of books published over the last decades by some of the world\u2019s most eminent thinkers: David Christian\u2019s Origin Story: A Big History Of Everything; Alain de Botton\u2019s Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer\u2019s Guide To The Uses Of Religion, Antonio Damasio\u2019s The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures, Daniel Dennett\u2019s From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds, and even \u00c5sa Wikforss\u2019 Alternative Facts: On Knowledge and Its Enemies, so fundamental a text in the 42-year-old\u2019s homeland that it\u2019s available for free to all of Sweden\u2019s third-year high school students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spurred on by such research, Local Valley\u2019s lyrics explore associated subjects. \u201cMany songs have a crystal-clear, secular humanist agenda: anti-dogma, pro-reason,\u201d Jos\u00e9 elaborates. \u201cThere\u2019s no political agenda, though, at least not in a classical left-right spectrum. Maybe in a globalist-secular vs theocratic-nationalist way: the focus is on underlying worldviews, and on our existential questions as smart apes on a quest to understand ourselves and our place in the cosmos.\u201d The album, however, is neither intimidatingly impenetrable nor prosaic: like physicist Brian Cox, whose Human Universe afforded another source of insight, Jos\u00e9 addresses substantial affairs in an accessible manner suited to his music\u2019s apparently ingenuous nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As it happens, this is something he\u2019s always done, even if it\u2019s rarely been identified, and that it\u2019s so inconspicuous speaks volumes of Jos\u00e9\u2019s ear for nuance. In case there were any doubts about his philosophical intent, however, opener \u2018El Invento\u2019 examines questions like \u2018Where do we come from?\u2019 then queries the routine answer: God. Forewarned is, therefore, forearmed: take a closer look at \u2018Visions\u2019, which picks up where Vestiges & Claws\u2019 \u2019Every Age\u2019 left off, advocating unity in our search for meaning, or at \u2018Valle Local\u2019, which returns to territory from the same album\u2019s \u2018Stories We Build, Stories We Tell\u2019. As for \u2018Tjomme\u2019 \u2013 which bluntly asks \u201cWhat the fuck are you doing now? \/ Are you completely deranged?\u201d\u2013 it faces up to struggles between progress and tradition first confronted on In Our Nature\u2019s \u2018Abram\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Swing\u2019, too, revisits matters first tackled on Vestige & Claws\u2019 \u2018Let It Carry You\u2019, pondering \u201chow silly regressive, illiberal theocracies are, with Iran a recent example, where people made their own dance videos to Pharrell Williams\u2019 \u2018Happy\u2019 even though it was, and still is, forbidden\u201d. Then there\u2019s \u2018The Void\u2019, which, like Junip\u2019s \u2018Beginnings\u2019, reviews ideas of cognitive dissonance, and \u2018Lasso In\u2019, which \u2013 like another Junip song, this time \u2018Loops\u2019 \u2013 extols the benefits of meditation. \u201cSince my second album,\u201d Jos\u00e9 confesses, \u201cI\u2019ve usually gone to my own songs for reference, similar to how I sense Beastie Boys did on Check Your Head and their follow up, Ill Communication.\u201d There\u2019s certainly a lot upon which to reflect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recorded at Studio Koltrast Hakefjorden, which he set up in his family\u2019s summer house north of Gothenburg \u2013 if you listen closely, his ancient laptop\u2019s fan can be heard whirring within wood-panelled walls \u2013 Local Valley again finds Jos\u00e9 alone with just a handful of nylon-stringed Spanish guitars, chosen for their resonances and characters. This time, however \u2013 on \u2018Lasso In\u2019, \u2018Lilla G\u2019, \u2018Swing\u2019, and \u2018Tjomme\u2019 \u2013 he employs an iPad\u2019s DM1 drum machine app, replacing the congas and bongos of 2003\u2019s Veneer and 2007\u2019s In Our Nature and his percussive use of the guitar itself on Vestiges & Claws. \u201cI also allowed myself to loop guitars as I aim to do live with pedals,\u201d he adds, \u201cand in my head I was hearing how each track would fit with an orchestra (The String Theory) or my five-piece band (The Brite Lites), with whom I\u2019ve been touring on and off the last decade.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are, however, collaborations \u2013 of a sort \u2013 on Local Valley that took place outside of Jos\u00e9\u2019s head. \u2018En Stund P\u00e5 Jorden\u2019 is a cover of a song by Iranian-Swedish artist Laleh \u2013 a former refugee who\u2019s topped Swedish charts multiple times after growing up in the same multicultural Gothenburg neighbourhood as he did \u2013 while on \u2018Honey Honey\u2019 he looks back to \u2018Music On My Teeth\u2019, a song from DJ Koze\u2019s 2018 album, Knock Knock, upon which he guested. \u201cCan I also mention,\u201d he adds, \u201cthat I had a jam session with Bombino, the artist from Niger, back in 2016 when he hung out in Gothenburg? That, together with his performance on his own with a guitar, was very inspiring while writing \u2018Valle Local\u2019 and \u2018Head On\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Lilla G\u2019, meanwhile, was written for his daughter, for whom \u2013 and most likely with whom \u2013 he\u2019s sung it most of her young life. Given such unabashed intimacy, combined with his eagerness to address grand themes, it seems only appropriate that Jos\u00e9 first unveiled \u2018El Invento\u2019 as part of the 2020 Nobel Prize Award Ceremonies. Four albums in, Local Valley finds him \u2013 in the words of \u2018Visions\u2019 \u2013 \u201cImagining the worlds that could be \/ Shaping a mosaic of fates \/ For all sentient beings.\u201d Few people would \u2013 or could \u2013 slip such a bold claim into a song so soberly and nimbly, but then again, few people have managed to become quite so celebrated worldwide quite as quietly as Jos\u00e9 has. What a relief it is to be reminded that you don\u2019t have to be loud to be heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n