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Jose Gonzalez, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, April 14
1:25pm Friday 11th April 2008
Hard to believe now, but Swedish-Argentinian singer-songwriter Jose Gonzalez began his career in a hardcore punk band.
So it must have come as a surprise to everyone that 2003's Veneer, the album which made his name, was a collection of gentle, stripped-back indie-folk songs that saw him compared to the likes of Nick Drake and Tim Buckley.
Thoughtful and sparse, his guitar-and-vocal songs caught the attention of music-lovers and ad men alike. His tracks popped up on everything from angsty American TV drama The OC to Sony's "bouncing coloured balls" advert, which used his cover of Heartbeats by fellow Swedes The Knife.
He also stamped his mark on somewhat unlikely tracks such as Kylie Minogue's Hand On Your Heart.
Gonzalez appears unconcerned that he could become better known for his covers than for this original work - the first track on latest album In Our Nature, released last September, is a cover version of Massive Attack's Teardrop.
"I suppose it's the entertainer in me that enjoys doing covers," he says. "They lighten the mood tremendously when you're performing live.
"Also, I'm an extremely slow songwriter.
"I feel that Heartbeats is an important part of my history. I play it at every gig because you can see it's a favourite with the audience and I still think it's a really great song.
"The lyrics have always been important to me when deciding if I want to do a cover or not. And I've always tried to avoid covering numbers that are simply guitar and song."
In Our Nature is another minimal folk album, but one that, unlike Veneer, uses traditional song structures.
"On Veneer, I tried to avoid ordinary singer-songwriter numbers - instead of verse and chorus, they were more like song sketches based on repetition," he says.
It was partly influenced by Richard Dawkin's best-selling book The God Delusion.
"It didn't change my world view," he told one interviewer. "But it gave me more arguments for what a big delusion it is."
- Starts 8pm, tickets £16. Call 01424 229111.
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