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Live Review: José González at Webster Hall [12.9.07]

Webster Hall: not necessarily the place you expect to hear a singer-songwriter demanding the kind of intimacy that José González does. There were girls talking about curling their hair; there was that guy who sang along to parts of nearly every third song (the very inscrutability of his decisions to join in adding to the distraction); there was that couple kissing and making out loudly behind you; yes, the people there were doing the annoying things that people do at every show. But on Monday night, inside the warm, large, dry space that is Webster Hall (it was rainy and miserable outside: perhaps one of the reasons why tickets were still available before the show), I realized some things about González the performer that made all the noise and all the anger at annoying inattentiveness disappear.

Most importantly: there is one thing certain in this world, and that is that José González can play the guitar. Watching his fingers curl around while they pick the strings is like watching a sea anemone’s tentacles floating in the current. He combines the skills of a classical guitarist—the ability to play multiple lines at once, flawless fingering technique, a quiet workmanlike mastery—with the dramatic sensibilities of a punk rock basher. Of course, Jose never, ever bashes. But he has this ability—and it especially comes out live—to transport a song with only his acoustic guitar (!) to a new level of intensity. He’s not a screamer. He’s not going to rip out his lungs in a moment of passionate frenzy. He hardly lets his voice rise above a whisper. But he will do something subtle, like add a particularly catchy and heavy bass line to a song, as in “Deadweight on Velveteen,” and it feels like he’s crushing you. In that good way, of course. Such moments make it exciting to see him live. They make it seem like he’s not stuck inside the bedroom with the door closed.

This expansiveness also works with his more overtly political lyrics on the new album, In Our Nature. While the moment of direct Bob Dylan-esque political rants is over, the dark possibilities for the first song he sang, “How Low” (“How low/are you willing to go/before you reach/your selfish goals…invasion/after invasion/this means war/this means war”), register with all of us. Yes, we can imagine it working on a metaphorical level (“Oh my god, he’s talking about my boyfriend!”), but where the metaphors come from--war, death, killing, hatred…that’s all pretty disturbing and prescient stuff. This all came together in one of the few moments where J.G. wasn’t singing or playing the guitar. His longest speech to the audience was a little story about how he found a bullet on the street here in the city (“Welcome to America!” yelled a girl close by). He put the bullet in his shirt pocket. Then he saw an evangelical who threw a bible at him: “It would have struck my heart,” he said, “if it were not for the bullet in my pocket."