Pick four songs from any band and you can tell a lot about their sound. This summer, I’m featuring #RockBlocks, four picks from bands across various genres. They might be wildly different from each other, but what binds them together is the fact that they’re all a part of my life soundtrack.
Vestiges & Claws is my favorite Jose Gonzalez album from beginning to end. On it, he continues to evolve his sound with new techniques and styles primarily driven by his acoustic guitar. But the album is still 100% Jose Gonzalez. On Vestiges & Claws, he never tries to shed his musical persona or attempt to be like anyone else. But yet he does things instrumentally that he hasn’t done before, like on “Let it Carry You”.
On the surface, this seems like a happier, less introspective Jose Gonzalez song. But it’s much more than that. “Let it Carry You” is like a musical inverse of the artist’s standard fare. In concert, he plays both the treble riffs and the bass simultaneously, just as he does with all of his songs in a live setting. But here he flips the emphasis on its head, making the bass the driving force and identity of the song, while the treble notes play a secondary role. It’s a brilliant move, because even with the inverse it still sounds just like Jose Gonzalez.
“And this song into the fall. All things near of things gone to remind of all restless souls of the beauty of being here.”