A great acoustic listen

Reviewed December 2007

Sweden's José González (he is of Argentinian descent) is one of the few truly solo acoustic performers to gain chart traction of late. On his new album, for the most part it's just him – singing and strumming an acoustic guitar. While there are some overdubbed harmony vocals, and a few tracks with hand percussion, the sound here is still very spare.

And yet that sparsity of sound is all of benefit to the recording – ironically, because Gonzalez writes songs of tremendous complexity. At times, he reminds of the Beatles' mid-career acoustic work. At others, his vocal harmonies (with some provided by a Y. Nagano) remind of Crosby, Stills & & Nash.

But without great songs, that would be so much weirdness. The fact that he writes absolutely gorgeous songs makes the whole very organic and as good an acoustic listen as there is going today.

Review by Jim Trageser. Jim is a writer and editor living in Escondido, Calif., and was a contributor to the "Grove Press Guide to Blues on CD" (1993) and "The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Blues" (2005).