José González (Swedish American Music Hall, 19 March 2006)

José González is a singer songwriter from Sweden. His album, Veneer, has been out for a while but is only seeing the light of day here in the States three years later. His album is full of deep lyrics that is accompanied by some excellent classical guitar playing. His live show at Swedish American Music Hall in front of a sold out audience lived up to the album's potential.

The Finches came on first. This girl-boy duo played harmonious acoustic pop music. I can't say much about this band other than they are "cute." The lyrics were "cute," the girl lead singer looked and acted "cute" and the strumming of the two acoustic guitars were "cute." It was "cute" and pleasant. I enjoyed them a lot, believe it or not.

José González came on next. In his first few songs, I had trouble understanding what he was saying. The words were indecipherable, but the strumming of the guitar was top notch and sounded complex (this coming from a guy who only knows how to play the "C" chord). It begs to question whether he was initially nervous when he started off, but he regained his composure towards the middle of the set.

He played a few "new" songs, songs from Veneer like "Heartbeats," "Love Stain" and "Broken Arrows" and a couple of cover songs as the last two songs of the main set. I still don't know what the two songs were, but a friend suggested that one of them was Nick Drake's "Three Hours" from Five Leaves Left. Whatever they were, they sounded great.

The three Veneer songs I mentioned above received the loudest applause and caught the most attention from the crowd. His voice was very powerful, and the guitar work was just amazing. This was evidenced by the crowd giving him a rousing standing ovation after his first set of songs.

Not a bad debut concert for José González. I'm sure this guy will be playing in much larger venues here in San Francisco in due time.

Beer Rating: 1/2