RECENTLY on a podcast from Guardian Unlimited (music.guardian.co.uk/podcast), Swedish musician Jose Gonzalez was asked to comment on Dogs, the latest single by Irishman Damien Rice.
His answer, humbly said, is telling: 'Eh, yeah, guitar and vocals... and the kind of shaky voice. Nice I guess, and even though I play very similar kind of music, it's not really my cup of tea.'
Those of you who have witnessed gigs by Rice and Gonzalez in Singapore will find a ring of truth to this.
Unlike Rice who trades in a sort of tremulous, even manic performance, Gonzalez is unerringly calm, even imperturbable.
Yet, scrape the cool surface and the latter unfurls cool intelligence and acute humanity.
His is a kind of music that doesn't play to the gallery; it's gravity in grace, inviting you to ponder and share, well, a cup of tea.
His second album, In Our Nature, takes the spartan acoustic setting of his 2003 debut album, Veneer, to a different level.
It's deceptively laid-back, yet this time round, the songs are studiously sculpted so that they eventually shine, limpid, like gems in the blackest of night.
From the onset, Gonzalez makes it clear he's venturing into man's darker recesses as he casts an eye over the current world (dis)order.
On the opening track How Low, he asks: 'How low are we willing to go?/Feeding a monster... Invasion after invasion, this means war.'
It's an unlikely protest song augmented by classical-guitar precision and a gentle voice, double-tracked for maximum impact, cutting through like wisdom.
Down The Line, similarly, is pivoted on urgent axework as he pleads: 'Don't let the darkness eat you up.'
His barbs pierce deep through typically Scandinavian understatement. A song like Killing For Love has the same effect, burrowing into your conscience as he asks: 'What's the point if you hate and kill for love?'
Even a transcendental cover of Massive Attack's Teardrop becomes loaded: 'Love, love is a verb/ Love is a doing word/Fearless on my breath.'
Any human vanity is shredded in the last song, the eight-minute Cycling Trivialities, with its own dreamy, intoxicating logic.
Softly, it prods you into self-reflection: 'Who cares then/100 years from now/Who'll remember all the players/who'll remember all the clowns?'
Such is the tension between pacificism and war-mongering, between soul and violence, implicit in each song.
In the world of Gonzalez, each breath is hard-won, a rarefied moment - as if Earth has stopped spinning and you can suddenly hear your own heartbeat.
