The last time I saw José González play was about 3 years ago at Webster Hall in NYC. It was a solo show promoting his second solo LP “In Our Nature” and I was actually lucky enough to interview him before his performance. It was a wonderful pleasure to find out that the Swedish-based, Argentinean singer/songwriter had an off-stage personality that matched his transcendental, mesmerizing, Latin-inflected, folksy rock tunes. At the end of that Webster show, he recounted a short story which threw all the attendants on a cerebral bender. He told a tale of how a religious man once flung a bible straight at his heart, and how he would have surely been killed if it wasn’t for a few bullets he was keeping in his shirt pocket. The misdirection and symbolism in the story only become clear after pondering his words for a few minutes. And therein dwells the genius of González’s music – as a listener you are absolutely transported to different dimensions and mind zones without quite understanding how he did it.
