When Dylan Thomas penned the phrase “against the dying of the light,” it was about fighting against the inevitable end that comes for us all. But singer-songwriter José González didn’t have death on his mind while creating the album whose title borrows those words. Instead, he was focused on life — particularly, how to improve it.
Against the Dying of the Light is a perfect storm of songs to showcase modern themes of humanity vs. technology and nature. His trademark, plaintive voice and nylon-stringed guitar breaks through the calm, fluid shell of former albums to become biting, sounding alarm bells. Nowhere is this more transparent than on one of the lead singles, “A Perfect Storm,” in which emphatically percussive finger-picking and strong words create musical tumult.
But Against the Dying of the Light isn’t all foreboding and impending stormclouds; there are moments of expansion, community, sweetness and light that step in when González connects to the humans around him. This is true whether he’s reaching out across the desert to collaborate with Sahel-based artists Tinariwen or writing a simple, buoyant song about little birds his children could sing with him at home in Sweden.
González and I talked about keeping that sweetness, connections among the musical community and feeling the exponential influence of participating in the overall community of humanity at large, using the little you can to affect positive change.
José González plays the Vic Theater in Chicago on April 27. Find Against the Dying of the Light out everywhere now via Mute Records.
Interview highlights
On using “against the dying of the light” as the title for a song and the full record:
I just stumbled upon that sentence, midway, and it felt right in the moment. I recognized it and decided to just go with it without looking it up, and then I recognized it later. [The full line] is “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
[The album] has a similar vibe to it. Basically, don't accept death. Do something about it. And of course with death, it used to be that you couldn't do anything about it. Nowadays, yeah, I'm not so sure. Maybe you can, but in my song I was thinking about these two themes that I've been mentioning:
- The enlightenment values — Don't let them go into darkness.
- And the extinction risks — Don't accept them as-is, with their one in 10 odds or whatever they are at the moment. Try to lower them, so that we can live a long and prosperous, flourishing life.
On his relationship with the guitar and whether he’s ever named one:
On tour, I have “number one” and “number two.” And then, all of a sudden, number one gets a bit cracked and broken. So I bring in another new “number one” or new “number two.” It’s actually a bit difficult for my sound engineers because they notice that each guitar has their own frequencies that are great or troublesome, and they can't see from a distance which guitar it is. [laughs]
But, yeah, they’re Spanish classical guitars. They're old nylon strings, which has been both part of my sound and also part of my troubles when I play live because it's difficult to push up the volume. But nowadays we've been finding tricks to make it sound good.
I’m looking forward to this tour, actually, with the big PAs and club settings. It’s a bit of cheating, but for most of the songs, it sounds acoustic and real. Once in a while, I have an octave pedal that reaches down to the subwoofers, and all of a sudden you can sit onstage and it sounds very powerful.
On writing across languages (English, Spanish and Swedish):
I was raised with Spanish in my earliest years, and then Swedish was my main language since I've always lived in Sweden. And then with the university, reading all the textbooks in English, all my songwriting was in English.
Culturally, I'm very Swedish — being someone who lives in Sweden but travels a lot. Swedish people travel a lot and are very cosmopolitan. So whenever I play in big cities, there's always someone yelling, “Sweden!” [laughs].
I actually enjoy having these languages, and also Sweden in particular has been an outlier in terms of cultures. If you look how modernized it is and how much well-being there is, it is always like top five, top 10. Finland always, always wins. But when I'm there, they don't look that happy [laughs]. I feel okay with being the Argentinian Swede and continuing being that.
On being a member of Giving What We Can, a community of people who have pledged to give at least 10% of their income to charities:
Peter Singer, the philosopher who wrote Animal Liberation [was the entry point.] For me, as a hardcore musician and my friends becoming vegan, I was like, “Hmmm, I should read up on this.” And I went to the library, and it was one of the earliest books I read on philosophy.
I've been following him, and he's basically the godfather of effective altruism, writing about affluence and poverty and how if we can help others in need with very little effort, then maybe we should. In his case, he means that we should, but then looking at the effective part. How can you use your resources, your time, your money, to do the most good?
That’s where the Oxford philosophers like William MacAskill and Toby Ord come in the picture, and some other sort of nerdy, nerdy people with the Excel sheets, trying to figure out where your money does the most good. Since then, it's blossomed out to an amazing community and lots of research projects.
I decided in 2017 to give at least 10% of my earnings to effective charities, and I hope more people that are in rich countries can do the same. It's more psychological. Everyone has their own economy, and everyone feels like they wouldn't mind a bit more. So of course I'm aware that people have different economies, and I struggled for many years to figure that out.
I started with just giving 1%, and actually that's my tip to anyone who's thinking about it. They might already give 1%? Give one more to effective charities, or switch that 1% to effective charities.
I have my career, and I noticed that it was pretty stable. It took a while to [tell] my accountant that actually I'm really slow at writing albums, but you can see that people show up at the shows. And it doesn't really matter if my next album flops because I still have an audience that shows up. So she was like, “OK, sure, I'm OK with you giving away 10%.” [laughs]
