Here are a few tips for reviewing a CD. First after receiving the CD make sure that the PR or record label person who sent it to you knows that you have received it. Second (for those of you who, like me, rip everything to listen to it with your iPod/MP3 player) rip, said CD. Third, listen to it. Fourth, listen to it again. Fifth, listen to it again. Sixth – so you know where I’m going with this right – listen to it again. It’s very important that you listen to a CD at least four or five times before you write about it, you must know it, feel it and understand it – like that Bryan Adams song, “Have You Ever Really Loved A CD”. Lastly, write about it while listening to it.
Sometimes however you hear something that is so good, so powerful, so moving, you don’t need to listen to it more than once. You know it, feel it and understand it instantly. Jose Gonzalez Veneer is just such an album - perfect, moving, picturesque and achingly beautiful. I didn’t need a second listen. Yet I haven’t stopped playing it since I got it yesterday and I doubt I will anytime soon.
Listening to Veneer is like dreaming with your ears. Acoustic guitar so softly played, so bare, everything else just seems like unnecessary clutter. Perfectly plucked Spanish guitar, haunting, exhaled vocals and naked lyrics. What more do you need in a dream.
Veneer begins with “Slow Moves” an honest, defenceless track. The simple, palpable lyrics compliment the unvarnished guitar and Gonzalez pure, unadorned tenor is the ideal chaperon for his genere-less music.
“Lovestain” has a slightly more upbeat sound with rather joyous, almost evanescent hand clapping. These are in stark contrast to the barren, unconcealed, heart break conveyed in the lyrics of just three lines.
The only track not written by Gonzalez and the most instantly recognizable - as the theme for the Sony Bravia commercial with all the pretty coloured balls flowing down the street in San Francisco - “Heartbeats” is easily the most winsome song on Veneer. A cover of the song by Swedish band The Knife. In the original it is hard to hear the charming, mesmeric song that Gonzalez has created from it.
It wouldn’t be hard to over-review Veneer as every track is stunning, honest and exposed music. If this album has any weakness it is that the first half is slightly stronger than the second. But who would compare the works of a god? When something is so good there just isn’t a bad. This CD is a must-have for lying in front of a fire reading a book, or in the bathtub with a glass of wine, or lying in the garden in my hammock on a warm breezy summer afternoon or for dancing, swaying back and forth, wrapped, naked, in the arms of your lover. I can’t think of a time when you couldn’t enjoy Veneer and I can honestly say I have never enjoyed the job of CD reviewer more.
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