The Beat Surrender

Quite a rapid rise to fame for Jose Gonzalez in recent months. Veneer has been stuck in the upper region of the charts for a while now since it’s release back in January.

A lot of the success is down to two outside influences. The first and most obvious is the fact that ‘his’ song Heartbeats was picked up and used on the Sony Bravia TV commercial (the one with the bouncing coloured balls) which as everyone knows is a quick fire way to cut corners to success.

The second factor in his success is the fact that fellow Scandinavians The Knife very kindly let him use Heartbeats, as its actually their song which was released a good year before his. I’m sure the royalties helped swing that one though.

Even without those factors though Gonzalez is a talent. If for nothing else its his voice. Smooth and easy flowing across the tracks on here, it makes for a very laidback and chilled out listen, the only criticism I would have of Veneer is that it’s possibly a little bit too middle of the road and because of that the tracks tend to blur into one.