Jose Gonzalez, In Our Nature
The Swedish acoustic troubadour that popularized "Heartbeats" returns...
Clearly a firm believer in the old maxim "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," José González's much-anticipated second album carries on pretty much exactly where 2005's Veneer left off. If you're a fan of Nick Drake's darker moments, you will find more than enough here to keep you satisfied, and while González's songs aren't as relentlessly depressing as Drake's, they have a similarly haunting, hypnotic quality.
Although In Our Nature boasts nothing as instantly infectious as Veneer's trump card — his cover of the Knife's "Heartbeats" that soundtracked the Sony Bravia television ad campaign — sublime songs like "How Low," "Down the Line," "Time to Send Someone Away" and "Fold" just get better with each listen.
Clocking in at just over 33 minutes, In Our Nature is hardly what you would call a long album, but González still finds time to squeeze in another cover, a stripped-to-the-bone take on Massive Attack's "Teardrop" that manages to sound even more mesmerising than the original. Whether this album sells as many copies as González's debut remains to be seen, but there's an artistic depth to this tremblingly beautiful music that slowly reveals itself over time and will result in rich rewards for those willing to listen closely enough.
