José González's Head On

I’ve been a fan of José González's music for a long time — Sony used his song Heartbeats for a commercial and his minimal, acoustic sound was something that really caught my ears at the time. Artists like Nick Drake, Bon Iver, Alexi Murdoch, and Iron & Wine featured heavily in my own personal playlists at the time, and González's album Veneer proved to be a good fit.

I’ve followed him ever since — I even caught him live when he swung through Vermont on a tour — and I’ve generally enjoyed listening to his followup efforts, like his more forceful In Our Nature and Vestiges & Claws, which built upon that minimalist sound, but expanded and enriched it without departing too far from what made it really enticing.

González has a new album coming out later this fall, Local Valley, and he’s released a handful of songs ahead of that release: ‘El Invento’ (his first song entirely in Spanish), ‘Visions’, and ‘Head On’. He released the first video for that last one earlier today, and it’s a sublime listen: there’s some beautiful guitar work and minimal lyrics that grows into a solid, catchy beat. This one’s going to be on my new songs playlist for a while, I can tell.