Indies & Exposure: Jose Gonzalez

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

This week's band is a guy named Jose Gonzalez. His name is Argentinian, but he was actually born in Sweden. He is essentially a classical guitarist, but he signed to an indie label and is generally grouped with indie bands as a result (he plays at indie venues, he's played on indie radio). The moral of the story is that the indie community can love anyone, as long as they aren't down with The Man.

Jose Gonzalez really only has one full album to date (Veneer), which was originally released in 2003, but not in the US and UK until 2005. Probably another reason why Jose Gonzalez gets jumbled in with other indie bands is that he associates with them. He's done some covers of indie bands (the Knife, Massive Attack) and he is currently entrained in the British band Zero 7 (he's touring in the band and sang on 4 songs on their latest album). He also apparently listens to and is directly influenced by prominent indie bands (including my favorites: Tortoise, Elliot Smith and Cat Power).

Musically, Jose Gonzalez sounds a lot like someone used black magic to reincarnate Nick Drake and then trained him as a classical guitarist. He utilizes the same minimalism that is common in both Drake's and Elliot Smith's work and often has a dark emotional element combined with a gentle, uplifting melody that completes both of those associations. One can only hope, however, that Jose Gonzalez will not meet the same ultimate fate as both of those influential musicians.

Par for the course, I was introduced to Jose Gonzalez by my friend Karen. His music has been used on the previously-discussed TV show Friday Night Lights and increasingly in commercials. You can listen to the whole album streamed from his website and from his my space page. I'd also recommend checking out the live concert performance that he did as part of the All Song Considered program for NPR.

Note: his name is actually spelled with accents over the first e and the a, but Blogger made the characters into funny symbols.

Labels: music

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