Jose Gonzalez Veneer

Hello hello. Its good to be back. Clint back from obscurity with a feast of sounds to moisten your ears with. First up Album of the Year time. Jose Gonzalez. This is just magnificent. A beautiful collection of acoustic gems weighing in somewhere between Nick Drake, Red House Painters, and Miracle Legion's 'Me and My Ray' album. Therefore a squillion miles away from the usual singer songwriter guff doing the rounds. Every song is memorable and so full of goodness that surely eating it whole would do you absolutely no harm at all. Recommended with every bone in my body. On Peacefrog.

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8/10 Ozzystylez Customer review, 2nd February 2018

With so much warmth to the production that it threatens to set alight the body of the guitar upon which Jose Gonzalez's deft fingers pick out intricate patterns, Veneer is one of those rare records which grants you a personal and intimate audience with its creator and performer whenever you summon him by spinning the magic disc which the devestatingly sentimental melodies are etched upon.

Simple and sparse, the songs use the warmth of the production to draw you in closer, only to paint cold landscapes of sorrow and melancholy as Gonzalez illustrates an abstract of love and loss upon your brain which will be wooed and hypnotized by the repetition of the fingering pattern upon the guitar strings and the understated Majesty of his uniquely beautiful voice.

The standout track will be well known to most, a cover of The Knife's 'Heartbeats' which is otherworldly in its majesty, capable of transporting you back in time to where you were when you first heard it and let it in. It sits comfortably among the rest of Gonzalez's repertoire of originals, matching them all in tone and mood, Gonzalez truly making it his own as Jeff Buckley did with 'Hallelujah'.

Effortlessly beautiful and devestatingly heartbreaking, Veneer is a tonic for the sorrowful, offering a soft shoulder to cry upon and a warm hug that a cup-a-soup could only hope to deliver from it's position in a mug, no matter what the advertising may claim.

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