the making of veneer - featuring José González

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Intro: 

Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums, told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim. 

José González was born in Gothenburg, Sweden to Argentinian parents, who had fled the 1976 Argentine coup. He got his start playing music in hardcore bands and formed the band Junip in the late 1990s. During this time, he was studying biochemistry at the University of Gothenburg and recording solo material on the side. In 2001, he released a 7-inch, which found its way to Joakim Gävert and Magnus Bohman who were starting a new label called Imperial Recordings. They signed him to a deal and released the Crosses EP in the spring of 2003. The full-length album, Veneer, was released in the fall of 2003. 

In this episode, for the 20th anniversary, José González reflects on how the album came together. This is the making of Veneer. 

José González: I’m José González and I'm here to talk about my first album, Veneer.  I wanted to do music that was different from what I was hearing. In Sweden around that time, there were lots of sort of Americana bands, that were popular, everyone playing on steel string, that's why I felt like I wanted to stick to my Spanish guitar (laughs). Many times the song structures were very classic so I wanted to do something more repetitive and linear, inspired from, sort of dance music or from post rock, which is more dynamic and dramatic. I mean, I was into dark and melodramatic music before so I was into  bands like Low or Songs: Ohia, Cat Power. But I did feel like I didn't want to use the music in a therapeutical way. I didn't want to make my mental illness as something that I want to make explicit in the lyrics. So many of the lyrics are about the relationships, some are about inner struggle, and I always wanted to erase any trace of  something personal. But there are traces. 

I'll start around the year 2000. So I was at the university, had been there for, since, ‘97 and this was sort of after many years of playing in different bands also playing classical guitar but sort of slowly drifting away from the different bands including the hardcore band, Sweet Little Sinister and some indie rock bands, Only If You Call Me Jonathan and Unison, but yeah so doing my recordings from my apartment, but feeling more and more that this would be my hobby. So I felt that for a couple of years, but I wanted to document my solo material. So I released a 7-inch in 2001. Yeah and 2002 was when some record label people in Stockholm, Joakim Gävert and Magnus Bohman found this 7-inch and felt like they wanted to document it, release an album and so that was sort of like the start for me to rethink  what I wanted with my music. And so 2002 and early 2003, I finished writing and recording this first album in Sweden, Gothenburg.

And I was, doing my PhD, researching in biochemistry and studying viruses and how they replicate. So spending a lot of time in the lab (laughs), in a cold, 5 degree Celsius room to get the proteins to fold properly so I could study them. I'm feeling like that would be my future job. But yeah, I was doing these recordings on the side. I also did a couple of shows with the classical guitar, but also a couple of shows with my solo music and felt like I had a good reception, that I did sort of need some sort of input to allow myself to go fully into music. And that was when I picked a couple of songs to release as an EP. And this was in May 2003 that we released the first EP, which was Crosses EP.  And that took off really fast in Sweden, Swedish radio liked the song and ZTV, like a Swedish version of MTV started showing a video that we made, a very simple video with me in the back of a car with lots of people. And yeah, so it was a, kind of a surreal feeling of going from the lab and to get this attention from this song, “Crosses.” And all of a sudden, being able to head out almost every weekend if I wanted to and and just with one or two shows, I could pay the rent so I felt like it was pretty obvious to me that that I could switch, at least for a couple of years. And my professor at the time, he knew about my music hobbies. I already had been out on a tour with one of the indie, or two of the indie rock bands, touring Europe. So he wasn't surprised about the music, but he was surprised about the reception. And we had this talk and having the coffee and looking at each other and we're like, “You're not coming back, right?” “No, I don't think so” (laughs).

I mean my research project was a bit stuck and I wasn't having any results which were needed to get to this halfway point in my PhD. But also I've mentioned this a couple of times now in interviews that I had mental health issues and so around 2000 and early 2002, I had a psychosis. So after that psychosis, I wasn't as clear in my mind as I used to be. So the issue with my mental health was that it's basically lots of many smaller things, relationship issues, issues in within my family and also partly feeling that I was stuck in my professional research career and that stress building up to, there were a couple of weeks or even months that I had really bad sleep, and it just, I got this very strong reaction from my body. I mean, it came out of the blue for me, for some people around me, my friends and family, for them, they were noticing that I was, not sleeping, talking incoherently, I was very concerned about some things and a bit anxious. And it just (snaps) popped, and all of a sudden, I had to  be internalized into a, I think you call it a halfway house. So I got some antipsychotic medicine and it took a couple of weeks to sort of wake up from that mode. And after that, I did feel some sort of depression, I didn't have the same goal to do neither music or my research, but it was slightly easier with music. So in that sense, it was very nice to be able to switch to music where there wasn't the same type of pressure. There was of course, a lot of pressure from myself to perform these songs that I was classically trained, but still they could be pretty hard (laughs). But the pressure from living as an artist is pretty different. Like you can sleep longer if you want, you meet a lot of people. So it was a nice switch in lifestyle. So yeah, there was a time before and then time after that psychotic episode. So the switch from research to music had a bit to do with that. Although most of the album I wrote before that, not most, but maybe half. But after the switch, after the disease, I did write a couple of lyrics that were related to that. So one of them is actually “Crosses.”  And in a way, “Hints” is the oldest song, I wrote it in ‘98. That, in a way, fits to this  feeling of having mental illness, but it was way before. “Crosses,” on the other hand, you can listen to it and you can relate to it, but the narrative voice is someone who's comforting someone else. I used to write lyrics in that sense where I wanted to switch between me or I and you, so it's interchangeable. And so sometimes it's about me and sometimes about others. There are two other songs that, there were some paranoid elements to my mental illness, and so “Slow Moves,” the first song, has a bit of that. A sense of a hidden agenda. Someone having a hidden agenda and doing your slow moves to sort of get back on someone or something. But yeah, so, so many of the other songs have other themes, themes about relationships, but the overarching theme of the album is, the title Veneer, being, I was relating to ideas of illusion, things not being what they seem to be, or people pretending to be something that they're not. And many times that was self-reflecting. I was thinking about myself and how we behave in certain circumstances. So yeah, the title Veneer, I was looking at the different songs and felt like “Deadweight on Velveteen” and “Slow Moves” and “Crosses” and “All You Deliver” were songs that related to this, sense of surface, not showing what's underneath the surface. 

So when I started to record it was, I started by recording on this 4-track cassette recorder. So the songs, “Deadweight on Velveteen” and “Hints,” it was recorded on that and had a very lo-fi feeling that really made my, the record label guys enjoy it because they were all into like 60s and 70s music and loved that lo-fi feeling. But then I bought these, cheap China microphones and tube preamps, (ART) Tube MP, and the mics were U87 copies. So all in all, I think, it cost me maybe 500 dollars. So not that much. That was basically the equipment for the album and started to record on a desktop computer, which was pretty good. Back then it wasn't that many that were doing that. So in 2002, I started recording a couple of songs and the fan would go on all the time, so that you can hear it on “Stay in the Shade,” I think has a, like a “zzzz.” it was a fan starting to sound. So I bought a new PC and I bought it from a friend and later, I found out this was a stolen one (laughs). But apart from that, there was also the software that was all pirated, which in a way was the way everyone did it in my community, but of course I started to pay for software later, but that was after my success (laughs). But I was always keen on emulating analog sounding, so tubes into the computer and then tube plugins while mixing, which is commonplace nowadays, but back then it was pretty weird. And yeah, it was two different apartments, one was, both of them were tiny. And so basically I had the kitchen here, my bed there and the computer there, all in the same area. And yeah, just trying to figure out how to make the guitar sound good and the vocals sound good. And since I was into lo-fi music, and we were talking about influences and Elliott Smith, I really enjoyed his first recording, not so much the second or third, same with Songs: Ohia. So there was something about trying to record in a lo-fi fashion or at least in a production where you keep a lot of the warmth and try not to polish too much, try not to add too much. So that was something that I was aiming for, just a good guitar take and one or two vocals, most of the time dubbed vocals and one harmony, one very low mixed percussion. But the ambition was that, to do very simple production. I was listening to João Gilberto and felt like I loved his music when it was just him and a guitar and didn't like it as much when there were more and more instruments, piano and drums and saxophone. And same with Chet Baker, like there were some recordings that I used to listen to a lot and I love their voices by the way, João Gilberto and Chet Baker. And there was something that happened with his voice, once you start adding more and more instruments, it got lost. So not to be, it wasn't about trying to be narcissistic. It was more about trying to figure out what people like. And I think for softer music, there's something about the voice, that's very central> Including the guitar, which has this interplay with the voice because they're in the same range, even though like for a producer, many times they want to add stuff where you don't have frequencies. But for me, that was, it’s obvious that you wanted to leave the upper frequencies open. So you have these, both the voice and the guitar, that are very soft sounding. Let them be soft. 

“Slow Moves” 

“Slow Moves” was, I wrote that song in the later half of the album. And I was into the, trying to find grooves that sounded a bit darker, but there was, it was about playing with the mic. So like rehearsing the song with the mic and with the headphones. So I was hearing lots of bass. And in that song and the lyrics, are one of those lyrics where I sort of reveal a bit about my mental history and my slightly paranoid ideas that I had once in a while. So “a compromise between honesty and lies, to lead me through their sly disguise.” So that's a pretty, I think for anyone who has had these types of issues, they can relate to that type of thinking. But yeah, it was one of the, it felt like a starting song for an album. 

“Remain” 

“Remain” was also more about finding a feeling of revanchism, not revenge, but revanche. When you want to get back, you've had some setbacks early on and then you, you want to  signal that, it's kind of a feeling that I think is common when you're a teenager or early twenties. And then it was similar to the type of lyrics that I would write for the hardcore band in the sense of moral higher ground, feeling of owning that higher ground and a feeling of struggle. But yeah, it was all driven in terms of trying to, to get to that feeling. I had the music and then I added the lyrics as usual. It's the type of lyrics that I wouldn't write today, but it fits into the persona of maybe a 20-something. It's become a fun song to play live now that I'm playing the songs again, just because of the drama. Not so much because I don't relate to it on a lyrical level, but because of the musical drama, I like it. And yeah, I guess one of the inspirations was house music. So I was listening to  house music that had acoustic elements and I felt like this could be the song where it's really easy for someone to do a remix by just adding a house beat underneath. 

I allowed myself to do something, so adding additional vocals here and there and adding some percussion here and there. And yeah, it was a bongos on that song. And yeah, mix-wise, if I did it with more people, I would have felt that I needed to highlight them more, but since I was doing everything on my own, I could keep it very low key, all this additional stuff also, because I wanted to be able to play all these songs live on my own with just guitar and vocals. And I didn't want people to get upset if something was missing. Yeah, so most of these songs I hadn't played live. So it was all me trying to figure out how to make them on an album, so I could recreate them live. Even though I wanted to make most of the songs so I could play them on my own, once in a while I cheated. So at the end of the song, there's, I added an additional harmony, which feels like it's okay if it's here and there because people still use their memory to fill out the gaps. But yeah, it was one of those songs where I was aiming for a  more dramatic sound structure. 

I used to listen to recordings and when it just cracked a little bit, it added this tension and drama. And we used to record with Don Alsterberg, who recorded my hardcore bands and we're still touring together. He has a studio and he would tell me about these different tricks and I actually asked him for ideas how to record on the tape recorder because I didn't know anything. And he was like, “Yeah, just add a lot of treble first and not so much bass. And then afterwards we switch it. And that was the trick for the tape recording and the preamp, just have it so it goes on red once or twice during a song, but never more (laughs). So you want it to be just on that level so it cuts. So it acts as a limiter and tracking that was important so you get good sounding stuff into the computer and adding that drama, like allowing the voice and the guitar to overdrive once in a while. And yeah, the Tube MP has a distortion that is pretty grainy. So even today when I'm using tubes, I try to listen to the type of distortion you get, and many times if it's a hi-fi tube, they don't sound as good. So it's a matter of character. They might not be the most reliable, but those tubes had the right grain for me. 

So I used to play lots of bossa nova and I was listening to samba since I was a kid. So I guess it has a samba bossa feeling, but it's only inspired by, I would say. So it's, for Westerners, it sounds like a Brazilian and for Brazilians, it sounds very Western (laughs). I had the choice to use my name or use, like a band name. So many of my favorite bands, they used band names. So, Songs: Ohia, Cat Power. But then there were artists from the 60s and 70s. They used their names. So, Caetano Veloso and Mercedes Sosa, Silvio Rodriguez, Simon & Garfunkel (laughs). So there was, I was aiming at something classical. So I chose my name. I've regretted it once in a while, but it's been more fun than anything because it's such a common name. So in Sweden, of course, that was the exotic thing, like being a José González, it's not that many. So, “Okay, a Latino artist.” And then they find out, “Ah, he's from here, he's Swedish.” And then like going to Spain to play and they're like, “José González, quien?” They're like, “Who's this José González? Which one?” So yeah, it's been curious and fun. And there are other musicians, José González, and there's a baseball player, there's a murderer (laughs). We're a bunch of José Gonzálezes (laughs). 

“Lovestain” 

So style wise, I was all over the place, listening to, inspired by music from Latin America, from Brazil, from Argentina, Cuba, but it was also listening to house as I mentioned, but also blues. I didn't listen to all these styles that much. I knew enough to once in a while feel like I wanted to push a song in a certain direction. So I, of course, I have vague memories of all these songs, so I'll talk about the stuff that I do remember. So “Lovestain,” I think I wrote in the middle of the recording, writing of these songs and I wanted some songs to be sketches, to be very simple and very short and this was one of them but it was too simple and for my label guys so they asked me to do something and after lots of thinking, I added a bit of clap (laughs). And they were like yes, that's it. 

Many times, when I was writing the guitars, I was drawing inspiration from playing not only guitar, but also bass and not only classical guitar, but also folk. So in my mind, I wanted to make the guitar interesting. And many times that meant if I was having an  arpeggio, I would think about how the bass was playing or how the highest note would sound as a melody. So with “Lovestain,” it's, the thumb is doing a lot of work. So yeah, a simple song and about, once again, about relationship and relationship that end. And playing around with these very naive texts, but they relate to very strong emotions. If you're in the middle of a breakup or thinking about the one love that you were hoping for, but never got. 

“Heartbeats”

While I was putting the album together, I didn't have enough songs. It needed something extra. And the way that I worked with this album was the same as I used to do with Junip, or when I was about to have a show that we needed to fill out the EPs or our albums or shows with more songs. And so I was on the lookout for a cover and yeah, after looking through my other go to artists, it just hit me that this song “Heartbeats” was played all the time. And that clicked in my mind that it would be fun to do a cover of something current in a similar style as a Jamaican  reggae artist, would just take whatever is hit and make like five new versions of the same. So it was fun to  try to play a song that was so different from my style, but I felt pretty early that this could be something because of the beautiful music and the sort of the melody that's within this electronic sound, and it's still very classic sounding. 

When The Knife released their album Deep Cuts, or before that when they released  “Heartbeats,” it was playing all the time in Sweden on the radio, on TV, and I was a fan so I was listening to the album all the time. So we were living in the same area of town, in Gothenburg. And I have an old friend who had a moment where we had our, both our first 7-inches and I gave mine to Olof (Dreijer)and he gave me their first. So when I recorded “Heartbeats,” I wanted to have their blessing, so I went over to the studio where they were working and they were in the middle of it so I just handed over the CD and, and got a text later and Karin (Dreijer) was really thrilled and liked it a lot and was touched. So, that was a good, good moment. 

I was thinking about my arpeggio, about my bassline. I tried to imitate the original bassline. It was, it didn't sound that good. So I had to keep some elements and just rework some others. So keeping the vocals and the lyrics, obviously, but the bass would be a bit different and a bit more folky. And yeah, once I recorded it, I remember the reaction from friends and label that they felt instantly that this was the song on the album. They felt it with “Crosses” too, and that's why they went with “Crosses” as the first single in Sweden. Just so a cover wouldn't like, overshadow the rest of the album. Which I think was a smart move. But it did become the main song outside of Sweden. And the main song in my career. And I'm happy for it, I still love it. I still enjoy the lyrics, and I don't know exactly what Karin Dreijer meant with each word, but I like the lyrics as a relationship song, but also as a song that has these, the line of, “calling from hands from above to lean on wouldn't be good enough for me, no.” It resonates with my worldview where I feel like, as a humanist, I feel like we need to figure out our purposes, our values, without trying to lean on fictive higher powers. 

In all the bands that I was playing in, it was pretty common to tune down from E to D, so regular drop D, I guess you’d call it. But yeah, once I found, people pointed me to Nick Drake, I started to play his songs, or try to play his songs, and he would have many interesting tunings, so I was inspired by his tuning when I did the DADF#. So that's the tuning for “Heartbeats,” for “Crosses,” for “Slow Moves,” for “Save Your Day,” for “Deadweight on Velveteen” and for “Hints.” So the half the album is DADF# with the capo on different frets. So most of the songs I would try to record guitar and vocals at the same time, but almost every song I would just go, “No, stop it” (laughs). I took too many takes and I just decided to do only the guitar and then do the vocals. But with “Heartbeats,” I did guitar and vocals at the same time, which adds more harmonies,  extra harmonies, almost like when you're singing vocals in a choir and you're singing into the same mic you get these additional waves. So I think that added a bit of warmth to the recording. So guitar and vocals and then an additional vocal. The trivia is that I didn't have a karaoke version. My label was asking for one for many years and I was saying that I don't have one. But yeah, just a couple of years ago. I decided to try to rerecord the guitar on its own. And then yeah, I couldn't give them a karaoke version. 

I think everyone involved in my career have been surprised. And one surprise was when it came out in Sweden, with the album, the amount of attention, and I was able to play, you know, bigger and bigger shows because of the album, which was pushed by “Crosses” and “Heartbeats,” but then once it was released as an advert and with that video with the bouncy balls and all of a sudden it became a hit. So UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and some other countries, it became a hit which was, so it was already weird for me as an artist, I was into lo-fi, I was thinking about how many of the artists I liked, they would maybe sell 10,000 albums, but it was going platinum and gold in some countries and all because of that song. And probably because of the advert. So it was a huge surprise around 2006 and ‘05, ‘06, ‘07, where I was about to release my second album, but it just kept on coming, the shows and the people who wanted me to play heartbeats. So that was a surprise. Another surprise was, you know, going forward, 10, 20 years and feeling like, “Okay, this still works.” It's a combination of me and my guitar, but also with “Heartbeats” and many of the other songs. So there's something timeless that seems to be working. And I think it talks to how some songs, once they reach a certain level, they become part of the  things that people relate to. 

“Crosses”

I mean, when I had all the songs, I did a sequence, but my label, Joakim and Magnus, they were pretty hands on (laughs). I was their first artist, they were very excited for this album and they already, they had “Heartbeats” and “Crosses” and they knew that these were the, they felt like these were the two main songs and so they wanted them to be early, but not too early. So there was a bit of shuffling back and forth. They had their favorite songs, I had mine. Yeah. So “Crosses” felt like, once in a while, I write the music, the guitar and feel like, “Okay, this demo needs special treatment.” Like it sounds more like a hit than the others. 

I didn't know what to write, but I was on the train, traveling from, between Gothenburg and Stockholm and it's a three and a half hour trip. So I got into the mode of listening to the demo over and over again and started writing. And yeah, as I mentioned earlier, it related to the feelings or the associations from my mental illness and the idea of having this comforting voice,  being there and helping you out in your weakest moments. I wanted it to be an uplifting tone to it  so yeah, once again being in the middle ground in between something that's depressing and something that's a bit more light hearted. 

I was always struggling with the lyrics about the balance between sounding banal, but still trying to reach into things that matter. I was also very concerned about not sounding too cheesy or too happy or yeah, so there were many, I was pretty hard on myself back then (laughs). So there's always some actions and reactions, like I write something and then I want to write something else just to make it darker or lighter and so, “We'll cast some light and we'll be alright…for now.” That was sort of needed for my persona to be able to live with that type of lyric. 

Many times when I was writing songs and lyrics, I wanted to have visual metaphors. And so, I was thinking about crosses in terms of  suffering and death, which of course comes from the Christian tradition. But I wasn't thinking about Christianity specifically, it was more about the association with death and suffering. But yeah, I remember that I wasn't sure what I wanted to mean, but it sounded, yeah, it sounded like “Death all over the boulevard.” So basically like saying something very dramatic, the way that I was thinking then was to add stuff that sounded very dark, but then to let it be so open that people can relate to what they want. I was also thinking about crossings. So my language was a bit limited, I guess, still is. And then many times I use words in a way that isn't the standard way of using it. So I was thinking also,  crossings. In Swedish, it's almost the same word. 

“Deadweight on Velveteen”

I used to have my dictionary and just go back and forth and just find words. So I, without knowing what I wanted to write about, I just made a list of words that sounded cool. So “deadweight” was on the list and “velveteen” was on the list. So the meaning came later. 

It felt really fun to write it and record it. I did feel like I didn't get the punch I wanted to in the  cassette version because it's so lo-fi that it didn't have that lower bass. So on the album there's a newer version and on the 7-inch there's an older, less bassy version. So when I was playing the guitar, it felt natural to use the same tricks as when I was writing riffs for my hardcore band. And many times, it's about leaving something for later. So you have that impact that was inspired by Rage Against the Machine and other bands, where you have a drive and people are already liking it, but all of a sudden you add the next layer. So yeah, just waiting for the bass to come in. That felt like a trick from the past. And then also just repeating. So having that driving, driving riff and allowing the riff to be very simple. Something that's common in punk and hardcore. 

I have my two oldest songs on the album, “Hints” and “Deadweight on Velveteen” that were on this 7-inch. And I've mentioned many times how much I like “Deadweight on Velveteen” because  once I wrote it, I felt like I found a style that felt cooler than all the other songs that I've done before. So before “Deadweight,” I had written songs that were more sort of classic singer songwriter or whiny, like a bit more bedroom, young guy in a bedroom (laughs), didn't get the girl he wanted. So that way it was more poetic and more, I used metaphors in a different way and the style of playing, I felt like it was more driven and more repetitive. So once I had that song, it felt natural to write the other songs for the album, trying to build around that track. And I still do today, I feel like that's one of the key songs that I go back to, to find my core style. 

I was interested in a couple of different dynamics or juxtapositions, like one being the classical guitar and soft sounding and my voice, which many people find to be very soft or sleepy (laughs). But having lyrics that have some sort of darkness to them, or even if it sounds light or have something disturbing even. So “Deadweight on Velveteen,” I use the the words, “vulgar when brought to light. Vulgar, the lie.” So working with words that you associate to negative stuff. And then I was also very aware of trying to avoid certain things. So I was trying to avoid verse and chorus structures. Many times I was aiming for something more linear. Linear, variation, and back to the linear. Trying to be enigmatic, but still accessible, so it's still melodic music, but trying not to be obvious, that was one of the main drivers. 

“All You Deliver” 

I can't remember writing “All You Deliver,” but it goes in the same vein as “Slow Moves” and has this sort of frustrated feeling, and talking about the theme of things not being what they seem to be, and how we distort our views of who we are and who we want to be. And I wrote it in an accusational style, which was very common in the hardcore band. So “All you deliver is distorted pictures.” So that could easily have been a lyric in the hardcore band. It was definitely, in all these songs, whenever there is an accusational tone, I was switching back and forth between, I was telling that to myself, but also how it would sound for me to say to someone else. And that was a style that I liked a lot, like being able to read the lyric and read it differently, depending on the point of view. But I can admit that I was a very harsh critic on myself and I had that type of thoughts on myself. Questioning the stuff that I was doing and questioning if it was worth anything. But yeah, switching back and forth. So I had that back and forth of accusing myself and accusing others. I might have had those types of thoughts of seeing a switch in lifestyle because of success. But at that time, I didn't have that much success, so I was probably thinking about other people and how they would switch personality, once they had success. I didn't know that many, but, but it was definitely a theme among my friends to stay true to your old self, which is kind of weird. 

Once again, I'm not sure what I wanted with that song more than to have a riff that was a bit more energetic, but yeah, I guess I can mention one more thing, with that song, I had the percussive end where I start hitting on the body of the guitar, which was also a way to, I guess impress, because I was making this album with only guitar and vocals mainly, and I wanted to have little things here and there that made the sound switch to something else. And so the percussive end was inspired by that. And it's inspired by classical guitar, where there are many different styles of classical guitar. And what I felt was when it's solo guitar, yes, people like the harmonies, but many times what I enjoyed was when there was something that you, like had a surprise element. So yeah, banging on the guitar felt like a good switch. 

“Stay in the Shade” 

So I did a couple of shows with my songs, and people would mention how much it sounded like Nick Drake. And at first I felt like, “No, this is not like Nick Drake at all.” But then, and I didn't understand him, but I gave him a try and listened to his albums, and it really grew on me, and it became one of the main inspirations. Like Pink Moon, as an album, inspired me to do this. To keep the length as it is and keep the simplicity as it is on Veneer, but yeah so I got inspired by him and I did write a couple of songs after listening to him. And so “Stay in the Shade,” this is a very Nick Drake-y type of sound that I wouldn't have written without him. 

So the playing of the thumb on the same note over and over again is very Nick Drake-y, “Cello Song,” for example. But yeah, “Stay in the Shade” was this yeah, very Nick Drake-y melody and was one of the other themes and during that time in my life where it was all about a self reflection of staying in the same place in life without changing. And so, a bit of self advice of “  Stay in the shade and see how you fade,” pushing myself to do other things that I was at first uncomfortable with, but would lead to a different type of life. 

“Hints”

So, “Hints” is the very oldest song, I think I had a version of it in ‘98, so the style of playing is lightly inspired by flamenco, flamenco bluesy type of playing, which still today is different from all the other songs. 

Yeah the lyric was a very simple lyric about getting frustrated or getting stuck if you don't get the input from the outside. You can try and try to do stuff, but if you don't get a hint once in a while that you're on the right track, it doesn't work. It can be pretty frustrating and it can lead to depression. So yeah, it's, in a way, once again, like it sounds banal and naive, but I was all the time trying to relate to topics that can be important or heavy or difficult. 

Very few times I remember the writing or recording of the songs and but this time with this song, I remember clearly visiting a friend that was a, I mean, he had been a, what do you call, a problem child, since we were young. We would skate together and he would get into trouble, he would get into drugs and yeah, he was in jail and went to visit him and it was actually his birthday. So it's, which is the same birthday as my brother. So I have a clear memory of getting back from jail. It was, it's November and pretty dark and went to my small apartment and took out the tape recorder and recorded in the first takes of this song. And I was definitely tinted by that experience. Even though the lyric I had, I had the song before, but I did, I think I did the recording the same day. 

Once I was starting to write, it was almost like I got stuck and therefore I was writing about getting stuck, which is kind of silly. But I was also, I was thinking about relationships, I was thinking about career, my parents were breaking up, so there were, you know, other issues that weren't only the young guy writing about his narcissistic songwriting (laughs). 

“Save Your Day” 

So this is one of the songs I can't remember writing, so I can speak about the lyrics and the chords. Now that I've been playing the album again, this is one of those songs that I haven't played for ages. And I just instantly, I hear how much influenced I was by Indie rock and the type of chords that we would play with the indie rock band. And it's the only song where I allowed myself to strum in a classic, folky way. You can hear the protest singer in me. So again, when I was that young, I mean, I wasn't super young, but I didn't, I had my ideas of politics. But it was more of writing a lyric that felt political. And so I was trying to aim at a protest type of song, but I, I'm not sure what I wanted to express, which is okay, of course. But now that I look back, it's the type of lyric that I wouldn't write today. 

But yeah, it has a sense of a revolutionary ambition of “Poking the body with a stick, rolling it down, ignoring the moaning as it tumbles to the ground,” which I was referring to, basically our cultures. I felt that there was a time for change and a sense of trying to have that change, even though it might lead to the old culture dying and moaning. And there are some other lines that might reveal that I came from a left leaning or sort of skeptical background and I was yeah, feeling that we have a culture where you just need to fit into a mold and it's all about the numbers. And so yeah, hints of a young revolutionary mind without a clear ideological map. 

While I was writing the songs and also choosing which demos to make a song out of, once I had “Deadweight on Velveteen,” I had the songs that were linear, that were repetitive, I also wanted some songs to be harmonic and a bit more classic, so “Heartbeats” and “Save Your Day” have a bit more of fuller chords. But yeah, it felt like, “Okay, only one song, not more than one strumming fuller chord song.” 

“Broken Arrows” 

So “Broken Arrows,” I was  thinking about the songs as classic songs, or like regular songs, and sketch songs. And “Broken Arrows” is a sketch song inspired by how you can have Japanese, there was a classical guitar tune that I used to play called “Sakura” and that had different, just like different short versions of the same melody. So “Broken Arrows” is a bit inspired by that, having a very simple guitar and a very simple lyric. But once again, like talking about in this case a relationship that maybe blossomed, but that was only a summer romance and how that's the way things are most of the time. 

And yeah, inspired by the album Pink Moon, I felt like I wanted to have, I was imitating a lot, as a young artist. So I wanted to imitate Pink Moon in the sense of having guitar, almost only guitar, but then add one instrument, and then I added the trumpet. And once again inspired by Chet Baker, so through my then manager, we asked Stefan Sporsén, who's now a very well known Swedish trumpet player, to add a trumpet. So I sent him a recording of my mouth trumpet and he would, he just imitated it and added it. This was like the last, very last thing I did on the album. I already moved from the tiny apartment to a bigger apartment. And yeah, I was feeling a bit more lighthearted. And so that was a nice sort of ending of that recording. It did feel very much like a closing song from even before I had the trumpet. 

When it was time to mix and put the album together, I asked a good friend, a good musician, if he wanted to mix it and he was like, “No, I'm really bad at this.” But we had another friend in common, Mikko Hellsing, and we asked him and even though he had been mixing a bit. It wasn't like his main thing, but it was very sort of technical and good with computers. So he, yeah I started to mix it all in the computer, but using, thinking about, how analog mix would sound. And so there were all these like new plugins that were super new at that time. So tube emulators, tape emulators, we even used EQ to match, you take a song, any song at all and make a frequency map of it and apply it to your song so it sounds more pop. So we actually took a song by Björk to tweak the frequencies. So there was a lot of interesting stuff going on at his place in this little studio. He did the mixing and mastering on the same computer, but I went back to my place and it was time to send the final version. And I listened to it and it sounded way too bassy, with “Slow Moves.” So in the very last minute I turned down the bass on that song three decibels, which I think is quite a lot in mastering circumstances and but it worked out. Anyway, I told him later and he was like, “What?!” So it's a final tweak. But yeah, so much of the sound is  it's of course me recording the way I did, but then like tweaking it so it actually sounded less, less lo-fi than I was aiming for. It was Mikko Hellsing, which he used all these tricks that I mentioned and many more. And yeah I was treating my music in a lo-fi or mid-fi fashion, but the label and Mikko, they were treating my music in a, like, they were aiming high. A bit too high in my opinion. But now with all these years after, it seems like they chose the right path, at least for my career. 

Going back in my memory, there are some things I remember very clearly and one is doing my first shows, once I released the EP. That was a bit crazy for me. I did shows before and people liked it, but once the music was out, there was something very different and people started to recognize me. And so there were very mixed feelings because I was pretty solitary. I was very shy, but all of a sudden, like going out in the streets and people recognizing me, that was a bit weird. And also maybe not, not perfect regarding my earlier psychosis. So like having that sense that people look at you when they actually were looking at you. Before then they weren't. But after the fact that I released my music, it was different. So that was a mixed bag. But yeah, so there are some things that were the highlights of my career. One was the week when “Crosses” was released as a single and I was at home and seeing that all of a sudden, like the radio was playing it on heavy rotation on the highest level. So the song wouldn't come on every hour and the same with the video. So it was, it was a weird feeling to switch on the TV and there I was. Which I think many artists feel that way, the first time they get attention, but it did push my life and direction from, this was in May. In June, I did a show in a Swedish festival. They allowed me to play even though I hadn't released an album. And this little round scene was packed with people. It was a really cool feeling. And half a year later, I played the concert hall in Gothenburg with a more classic setting. So having gone to that concert hall, looking at classical guitarists and all of a sudden being there myself and being able to invite some of my favorite musicians from town like Erik Bodin and Yukimi Nagano, felt like an accomplishment and also playing with Jens Lekman. So, within that year, 2003, it felt like I switched lifestyle and personality and yeah went from biochemistry to music. 

Veneer is my first solo album, the one that launched my career, the one that solidified my sound. It's the one that has meant, I guess, the most to me and many of my fans. It's the one that I go back to and I almost never leave out a song from that album when I'm playing live. And yeah, Veneer is a very sort of personal album that I've been open about how personal it actually is. And yeah, it's been 20 years with it, so now it's, I have a different relationship to it, but yeah, it's part of who I was and partly who I still am. 

Outro: 

Dan Nordheim: Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about José González. You’ll also find a full transcript of this episode and a link to purchase Veneer, including the 20th anniversary Deluxe Edition. Instrumental music by Jonathan Kirk Moyer. Thanks for listening.

Credits:

"Slow Moves"

"Remain"

"Lovestain"

"Heartbeats" (Karin Dreijer and Olof Dreijer)

"Crosses"

"Deadweight on Velveteen"

"All You Deliver”

"Stay in the Shade"

"Hints"

"Save Your Day"

"Broken Arrows"

Lyrics and Music by José González, except “Heartbeats” by The Knife

Recorded and Produced by José González

Mixed and Mastered by Mikko Hellsing

Guitar, Vocals and Percussion by José González

Trumpet by Stefan Sporsén

℗ & © 2003 Imperial Recordings

Episode Credits:

Intro/Outro Music:

“Walnut Boat” by Jonathan Kirk Moyer from his self-titled album.

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam