Once again, I've saved you all the trouble of perusing through Spotify or Apple Music or whatever and posted some highlights from In Our Nature, which I've reviewed down below. You can thank me later.
How Low
Abram
In Our Nature
Contrary
to popular belief, Jose Gonzalez isn’t the lead singer of my favorite mariachi
band (I don’t have a favorite mariachi band, but if you know any, please feel
free to share them with me). No, Jose Gonzalez is instead a Swedish-Argentinian
singer-songwriter who would definitely have a spot in a VIP booth if indie-folk
was a nightclub and not a genre. Basically, if I had a bracket for the indie
championships, Jose could crack the Final Four without a doubt. But enough
about musical basketball and more about In
Our Nature, which is Gonzalez’s sophomore album. You may be asking yourself
why you should give a shit about this album, but fret not, I’m here to tell you
exactly why. Gonzalez’s In Our Nature has
all the elements of a standard indie-folk album, with all of its buzzing guitar
strings, intimate and breathy melodies, and the occasional, yet still very
subtle backing vocals. And yet, Gonzalez takes what we all already knew he was
good at and turns it into an examination and critique of the political climate
and culture at the time (the time was 2007, which if you’ve forgotten how old
you are, George W. Bush was still our president, the final Harry Potter book
was published, and the first iPhone came out). In Our Nature doesn’t attempt to be particularly profound or make
some American flag-burning type of political statement, and yet in its subtlety,
it does just that. So with that being said, let’s break it down.
Gonzalez
kicks the album off with a bang, with the track “How Low.” The opening line
begs the questions, “How low are you willing to go/Before you reach all your
selfish goals/Punch line after punch line/Leaving us sore, leaving us sore.”
Now because this is indie music we’re talking about, the lyrics definitely
leave much up to our own various interpretations, however Gonzalez then goes on
to mention, “Feeding a monster, just feeding a monster/This means war, this
means war.” There are two paths that I think Gonzalez chooses to take with this
first track, as he both denounces the art of war, as well as the war that we
are currently still embroiled in, and also takes a shot at the mindless
consumerism of our society. “How Low” is purely a lamentation about human
selfishness and how it’s almost inescapable to act on said selfishness. The
lyric, “Feeding a monster, just feeding a monster,” is the perfect metaphor for
the two scenarios that Gonzalez works to paint, with us as consumers being the
monsters, but with our government also being the monsters. The funny thing
about this song is that it applied so well to the time that it was released in,
and yet, still applies almost perfectly nine years later. Gonzalez croons, “All
the gullible that you mislead/Won’t be up for it,” and “Where to, will you
relocate/Now that it’s war, now that it’s war.” Again, contrary to popular
belief, I’m not an analyst for CNN, but I think our society is very much the ‘gullible’
in the situation, as many people believed we entered the war for reasons
different than we actually did. And now that 2016 has brought upon the
beginning of what I’m convinced is the apocalypse, where will we go, now that
it’s war? Gonzalez hates the ugliness of war, something that’s made clear with “How
Low.”
You can’t talk about culture without
religion, and similarly enough, sometimes you can’t talk about indie-folk
without it either. Early American folk music was rooted in sort of fire and
brimstone notions, with religious references running rampant through the genre.
This trickled on down to its little brother indie-folk, which Gonzalez is sure
to remind us of with “Abram.” The sixth track on the album is a clear shot at
religion, with Gonzalez proclaiming, “Abram, either wake up or go to bed/You’re
sleepwalking with a delirious head/You were programmed a long, long time
ago/Your stories are old, old and your acclimation slow.” Besides the blatant
reference to religion with the name ‘Abram’ (you can trace all three major
religions back to Abraham and his squad), Gonzalez allures to the fact that he
doesn’t believe the Bible story to be relevant anymore, but rather a tool for
oppression and conflict. With the line “Not much of what you say makes
sense/Cook up some myths then ask for obedience,” Gonzalez is saying that the
stories and teachings of the Bible don’t match up to our current day and age,
and that we as a society, tend to blindly follow these teachings, despite the repercussions.
Take a look at the world’s conflicts now and you’ll find that many of them are
rooted in differences in regards to religion. The conflict in the Middle East.
The conflict in Sudan. The Islamophobia in the United States. The song itself
is based on a non-fiction book that basically denounces religion as a “delusion,”
and Gonzalez himself is an atheist, but I think the song captures the problems
with religion in a way that is both powerful and beautifully subtle as well. In
the way the album beckons us to take a better look at society as a whole, “Abram”
beckons us to listen closely to truly get the message.
And while we’re on the subject of
religion, let’s take a look at the titular track, “In Our Nature,” because you
guys know I love a good title track. The opening line of the song, “It’s in our
nature,” is repeated several times throughout the song and all I can think
right away is original sin. If you’re picking up what the Bible is putting
down, original sin, or human’s darker impulses towards evil, is the reason why
our world today is such a shit show. Gonzalez follows up these opening lines
with, “Put down your sword/Send home your dogs/Open your doors/Lower your
guard.” Here, Gonzalez pleads with the audience that despite the fact that we’re
born with this inner evil, everyone should just chill and love each other. So,
even though we as a society may be inherently bad, it’s also possible not to be
that way. This, to me, is a blatant response to our culture, and American
culture to be even more specific. Our current society is one that almost
inspires the innate selfishness that we all supposedly possess, and Gonzalez
works to highlight that, asks us to push it aside, and just love each other.
If you look up reviews of Gonzalez’s
sophomore effort, you’ll note a lot of critics saying that though it’s good, it’s
basically a clone of his debut album, Veneer.
Unfortunately, this does hold true sonically (don’t worry Jose, you’re
still in my Final Four), however, In Our
Nature asks so much more of us as listeners with its message being littered
with both political and religious reform. Even under the “prettiness” of the
album, you hear more passion and more of a sense of urgency from Gonzalez than
anything we get in Veneer. In Our Nature isn’t
the right album for a cold listen, but rather one that you have to warm up to
in order to receive everything it has to offer.
“On Your Wings”
Speaking of God,
“On Your Wings,” is a direct appeal to the big man upstairs himself, with all
the right elements to make him listen. The song opens with gentle, acoustic
guitar strumming (because remember this is indie folk we’re talking about) and
is soon joined by Beam’s soothing voice, proclaiming, “God, there is gold
hidden deep in the ground/God there’s a hangman that wants to come around.” The
slide guitar makes its way into the song as well, which is an interesting touch
for a song of this genre. The meaning behind the song is obvious enough, being
a request for an explanation for the state of humanity and the way things are
currently. The song pleads without begging and is reminiscent of indie folk
royalty Nick Drake’s “Day is Done” with the way it’s tinted by sadness that is
masked by smooth voices and expert guitar picking with perfect timing. If Bob
Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel are what jumpstarted the whole folk movement in
the sixties and seventies, Nick Drake is what kept it going in the nineties,
while also making it more modern and shaping the path that indie folk is
currently on. Beam’s guitar playing is what really keeps the song and album
rooted in folk, with his skill emulating the Southern Gothic sound that we
sometimes hear in folk music.
“Naked as We Came”
One of the most
common themes that is rampant throughout this genre, is the thing that makes
the world go round: love. Granted, it’s not all rainbows and butterflies all
the time, like Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Dangling Conversation,” which talks
of a dying relationship or Bon Iver’s For
Emma, Forever Ago, which is an entire album dedicated to every break up
you’ve experienced ever in life. Or on the flipside, Sufjan Steven’s Illinois, which is an entire album about
his love for his home state and Bright Eyes’ “First Day of My Life,” which
speaks of a man feeling born again upon meeting the love of his life. “Naked as
We Came” falls more into the latter category of love songs, describing a couple
that has been wholly devoted to each other until the end. Here, Beam takes some
cues from another genre staple, Elliot Smith, who helped lay the groundwork
down for the genre in the nineties. Though Dylan kicked off the genre by “going
electric,” the nineties crew (Nick Drake, Elliot Smith, Ani DiFranco) kept it
simple, with just guitars and their voices serenading us through the good and
bad times.
“Sodom, South Georgia”
Even if I
weren’t a Georgia native, I’m know I would still wholeheartedly enjoy this
song, but since I am, I fucking love this song. This is one of the songs that
solidifies Iron & Wine’s place on the indie folk timeline and makes it a
stepping stone for the artists that we’ll come to hear later in the 2000s, such
as Bon Iver, Father John Misty, or the Civil Wars. Even on the first listen, we
know it’s an obvious representation of the genre, but when you listen closely,
it becomes so much more than that. “Sodom, South Georgia” grows on the
storytelling elements of indie folk that weren’t always touched on in the
nineties era of the genre, and Beam brings more metaphors, more imagery, more
layers, more everything to the lyrics. You can picture the small Southern town
that Beam croons about with lyrics like, “All dead white boys say, ‘God is
good’/White tongues hang out, ‘God is good’,” and “Sodom, South Georgia/Slept
on an acre of bones/Slept through Christmas/Slept like a bucket of snow,” and
the song nails the unnerving quiet of walking through a sleepy, small town. The
song touches on more common themes that we see in the genre, such as life and
death, and love and loss, and like many indie folk songs that came both before
and after it, it’s meant to leave the listener with something that they didn’t
have before.
If you look at a
timeline of the indie folk genre, you’ll see Iron & Wine fall right at the
turn of the 21st century and they couldn’t have had more perfect
timing. From the boldness that we got from the sixties and seventies era and
the intimacy and closeness to the lyrics and the music we see in the nineties,
Iron & Wine manages to take these elements and only improve upon them,
solidifying themselves as game changers in the genre of indie folk.
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