Exclusive South African release: this mini album features previously unreleased tracks including José's reinterpretations of Kylie's 'Hand On Your Heart' and Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'
27 year-old José González is a rising star in Scandinavia, with his full debut single shooting straight into the Swedish Top Ten - though José's music is a starkly intimate contrast to Sweden's more gregarious rock exports.
Relying simply on his own masterfully eloquent classical guitar and a voice that marries mature assuredness with poignant delicacy, José creates an inimitable sonic world whose allure is all but irresistible. His achingly emotional melodies and thought-provoking lyrics - all sung in perfect, crystalline English - combine in a manner at once familiar (think Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, Will Oldham) and exotic (shades of Brazilian Tropicalia, flamenco, even the odd vestigial trace of Pampas tango). From these disparate sources José has conjured a unique and signature that is all his own.
Born in 1978, José was brought up in a house that teemed with all kinds of music. His father is also a singer whose natural taste for Latin American music competed happily with American and UK pop classics; the eclecticism immediately rubbing off on his young son, "We had a guitar at home that I toyed with", José recalls. "One summer dad gave me a thick yellow book filled with Beatles' chords, and another with bossa nova classics. I spent the entire summer picking out songs. That's how I got the basics".
After these fledgling dalliances, José followed his own path, initially playing bass in Black Flag inspired punk combo Back Against A Wall, before flirting with hardcore in Gothenburg's Renascence and dipping into indie rock with the unlikely sounding Only If You Call Me Jonathon... But these rites of passage only led him back to the classical guitar, and, after a series of lessons in flamenco playing, the beginnings of a very personal style. "I want (the guitar) to be more than an instrument," he reveals, "I've played classical music for some time, as well as flamenco. The flamenco is special in its touch and rhythm, often with a monotonous feel to it. My guitar playing is a mix of all that: bossanova, Beatles, flamenco and classical."
Vocally, José admits to the influence of some appropriately intimate-toned forebears: Chet Baker, Eliot Smith, Geoff Farina and Songs:Ohia's Jason Molina among them. He's also happy to point out the positive effect on his music instilled by listening to such disparate artists as Cat Power, Tortoise and Joy Division.
Although he had a limited edition solo single out in 2001 (and another that year as part of the Gothenburg group Junip) , José's recording career only really began in earnest in 2003 with the success of 'Crosses'.
