Can one raise a protest with just the tip of their lips? The Swedish songwriter of Argentine origin offers a luminous answer with a perfected sense of minimalism.
“Against the Vanishing of Light”: it is with this humanist and defiant title that José González has chosen to summarize his new album. The Argentine-born Swedish songwriter does not speak of the faint glow of Nordic winters, but of light in the sense of spiritual illumination that he fears may wane.
An official press release even goes so far as to declare that this fifth solo record would be a legacy of folk protest songs. But can one truly protest with a hushed, distant and cotton-soft tone?
Time Always Seems to Favor This Forty-Something Father
Rather than dissect his tri-lingual lyrics, sung in English, Spanish, and Swedish as on Local Valley (2021), one would do better to simply marvel at the softly fallow treasures he crafts, a minimalism that exudes elegance and shows that taking all the time one needs can still work for a man who is a father in his forties—the cover photo, by the way, was designed by his wife, the illustrator and designer Hannele Fernström.
Among these entirely acoustic songs, the livelier moments (including Losing Game (Sick) and the unsettled A Perfect Storm) make their mark. Some more meditative passages can feel a touch tiresome (the monotone For Every Dusk), while others instantly enchant ( (U/Rawls Slöja, You & We)). The guitarist and composer here plays within a dazzling halo of light.
Against the Dying of the Light (City Slang/PIAS). Release on March 27.
