Description
After six years, the Swedish singer-songwriter returns with another soothing album of sweet indie-folk murmurs. Spare electronic beats bring a new pulse to his sound, but the voice remains the same.
José González never sounds like he’s in a hurry. He takes his sweet time both in song and in life: The gap between the Swedish songwriter’s third solo album, 2015’s Vestiges & Claws, and fourth, Local Valley, was long enough to encompass the entirety of Trump’s presidency, several Lorde rebrands, and some 13 King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard albums. Yet the basic elements of González’s sound have been more or less preserved in amber since 2003’s Veneer: sparse arrangements, intricate acoustic fingerpicking, gently philosophical lyrics, and a plaintive voice that’s halfway between a murmur and a croon. González has carved out his own niche, imbuing his music with a sense of timelessness that’s impervious to trends. Local Valley brings no grand reinventions, but does gently tweak the songwriter’s approach and inject a little rhythmic bounce into his songwriting, making for a livelier, more playful album than Vestiges & Claws. An English-speaking songwriter born in Sweden to Argentinian parents, González has always been a cross-cultural talent. In interviews, he has emphasized the fact that Local Valley is his first album to contain songs in each of his three languages.
