I really want to like Jose Gonzalez. In fact, I’ve come pretty close in the past. Ostensibly, there’s nothing about him or his music I wouldn’t enjoy. Eclectic sound? Check. Diverse background and influences? Check. Pleasant folk music? Well, I love that! But every time I listen to one of his records, I find there’s just enough missing for me to not care. It’s either too repetitive, too fluttery, too lyrically loose, too derivative of Nick Drake, or even worse: all of the above. But, I like to like things that I think I should like. So, I was hoping that his latest release with Junip, a band he formed in the late ’90s with drummer Elias Araya and keyboardist Tobias Winterkorn, would provide me with another opportunity to find something worth loving in the Swedish-born Argentinean’s repertoire. But alas, with the final notes of Fields, Gonzalez and I part ways on almost identical terms. There’s just something, if not a few things, missing from this music.
