José González apparently does a fantastic Ali-G impression. To fans of his music, this may be a surprising, even disconcerting, crumb of trivia.
Wrapped in sad guitar chords and even sadder vocals, González’s songs can sound like distilled heartache. One expects their composer to be a frail and perhaps tragic figure, half afraid of life, half in love with despair. A fondness for the Idiot Prince of Bling doesn’t seem to fit the puzzle.
“My music often is very sad but that isn’t to say I am a sad person,” explains the 27-year Swedish native (the Latino name comes courtesy of South American parents). “I suppose it reflects one aspect of my personality, because, sometimes, I might occasionally be a little withdrawn. That’s not to say, I’m constantly down in-the-mouth.”
The singer has been around for a while – his debut EP, Stay In The Shade, fetched up two years ago – but came to widespread attention only lately, thanks to the single ‘Heartbeats’.
A cover of the electropop band Knife, ‘Heartbeats’ currently soundtracks a rather haunting television commercial for Sony, in which thousands of brightly coloured dots rain down on a city.
Getting into bed with the ad-man wasn’t something González undertook with any relish. Yet he is hard headed about his career and savvy enough to realise a high-profile advertising campaign can bring a performer to a wider audience.
“I’ve received letters calling me a sell-out,” he says, ruefully. “The way I see it, Sony aren’t a good or bad company. They’re just neutral. There are certainly companies, such as McDonalds, who I wouldn’t give my music to.”
González is the son of Argentine émigrés and was raised in Gothenburg, a city renowned for its love of punk and black metal (he played in a string of hardcore bands before discovering the terrifying potential of the plaintive chord change). Growing up in a Latin household, the singer acquired, from childhood, an appreciation of South American musical traditions, which have come to exert a strong influence on his song-writing.
“I play with a nine string classical guitar, which is popular in South America,” he says. “It gives my music a sort of Latin groove, which isn’t very explicit but is there in the background.”
South American songwriters have, González believes, been condescendingly marginalized under the ‘world music’ banner. Far from being of interest only to musical anthropologists, the continent, he feels, produces artists as experimental and intriguing as any you will find in Europe or the United States.
“I learned to play in a flamenco style, which is very sophisticated and has an internal sense of rhythm,” says González. "You won’t hear anything like flamenco in this part of the world.”
Re-tooling the synthrock flavoured ‘Heartbeats’ as a brittle acoustic lament took González only a few hours. He felt, he says, an instinctive kin-ship with the song. “I love the original. I think it is a very moving song. I wanted to preserve the spirit of the music.”