José González w/ Ólöf Arnalds at the Cedar, Minneapolis (16 Apr 15)

Ólöf, alone on stage with her acoustic guitar, sang some new songs from her latest Palme (One Little Indian), including “Turtledove” to an extremely quiet and polite Cedar Cultural Center audience. Her one cover in her 30-min set was “Caetano Veloso” by Brazilian singer Maria Bethânia.

Sweden’s José González took the stage with a full touring band and backlit stage lighting.

José González’s set can be broken down in three parts: the first section featuring mostly songs from the latest album Vestiges & Claws (“Afterglow”, “Stories We Build, Stories We Tell”, “Every Age”, “With The Ink Of A Ghost”), but throwing in some older songs and a Kylie Minogue cover (“Hand on Your Heart”) and one Junip song (González’s band).

In the middle of the set, the band took a break and left González on stage to play a solo set of his solo debut album Veneer: “Crosses”, “Hints”, and “Heartbeats”.

The third and last part of his set was fun. González basically played one new song, three covers (Barbarossa, Arthur Russell, and an odd choice of Massive Attack), and ending with two songs from his previous solo album In Our Nature (“Down the Line” and “Cycling Trivialities”).

For the encore, they invited Ólöf Arnalds on stage with the full band and they played “I’ll Be Your Mirror”, the Velvet Underground (with Nico) cover song. It is a very faithful cover, you can tell right away that they got the notes just right. The rest of the encore were two songs from the new album (“Let It Carry You” and “Leaf Off / The Cave”)

NOTE: Although “Let It Carry You” was listed as the fourth song in the set, it was not played early… instead, they saved it for the encore.

Gonzalez’s remaining sold out US tour dates: