There’s a moment in Ben Stiller’s 2013 remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty when the titular character, in his breakneck pursuit of the elusive photojournalist Sean O’Connell (played by Sean Pean), hops on a skateboard and careens down the gently curving black ribbon of a two-lane highway in Iceland with his arms outstretched in a gesture of pure joy. All of a sudden, Mitty seems to have been transformed; once a meek, acquiescent doormat of a man trapped in a grinding day-to-day purgatory, he’s now reborn as the freewheeling adventure junkie of his wildest daydreams. And the music that plays over the scene? The kinetic, autobahn-ish beat of Junip’s “Far Away,” with José González singing in his usual laid-back style: “Step in front of a runaway train/ just to feel alive again.” 

In a way, the scene is emblematic of how González has pursued his own dreams as a musician. Ensconced in his studio-outfitted kitchen in his hometown of Gothenburg, Sweden (where his parents sought refuge from Argentina’s right-wing death squads in 1976, two years before José was born), González crafts songs that are quiet, deliberate and deceptively powerful—rife with a haunting mysticism and a cosmic narrative scope that reveals a restless, active and wide-open mind. Since 2000, he has recorded two fulllengths and several EPs with Junip, along with two solo albums and numerous singles (including a hit cover of The Knife’s “Heartbeats,” which made its way into a global ad campaign for Sony). He has collaborated with indie art-pop idols like Zero 7, The Books and many more, and has logged nearly 700 shows, by his count, in venues around the world. He’s a dreamer, a thinker and a traveler fascinated by science and space—Carl Sagan is one of his heroes—and he’s guided by the ideal that in the great human drama, we all have a supporting role to play if we want to live up to our potential. 

“You could call it ‘hippie-esque,’ for sure,” González admits with a laugh, citing the connection he feels to songs like John Lennon’s “Imagine” and the protest music of a bygone era. “I think more now, than on my first two albums, I identify with that idealism. It’s something that I’ve been inspired by through Latin American musicians, too, like Mercedes Sosa, Sergio Rodriguez, Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso, and from the Swedish left-wing music movements in the ‘60s and ‘70s. But I think it’s also, more or less, like a global cultural movement; it just takes form in different ways in different countries.” 

Thoroughly at ease in his own skin, González carries a serene, unhurried and exceedingly polite aura about him—hippieesque to an extent, indeed—that shimmers through on his latest LP, Vestiges & Claws (Mute). He balks at first when asked to explain the title, but eventually, he brings up his keen interest in “remnants” of cultural expression. “I guess the combination of these two words gets to the idea of humanity having luggage, but also tools,” he says, “so the claws would be not only our hands, but also our mental and technical tools. And when I use these words in the context of ‘vestiges and claws fight for a common cause’ [as he exhorts on the song ‘What Will’], that’s about the idea of humanity facing a future that could be bright or gloomy, depending on how we steer our steps.” 

It’s been eight years since González released his last solo album, In Our Nature, but his steps have traced a broad and busy path since then. Along with his work on The Secret Life of Walter Mitty—he also contributed new songs to the film, as well as a stirring cover of John Lennon’s “#9 Dream”—he made two albums with Junip and toured with the band off and on for nearly four years. And whenever he had moments to himself, he would record riffs and gather ideas. 

“I ended up with so many that I had to go through which ones I wanted to choose for this album,” he says. “I guess quite a few are old, and some were half-finished songs that I had for a couple of years before I started to work on them again. And I felt like it would be fun to make a third album that continues in the style from the first two, so there’s a lot of focus on the guitar and percussion and vocals, but there’s slightly more of everything.”

As the sum of its musical influences, Vestiges & Claws stands out in vivid relief from its predecessors. González rolled out his 2003 debut Veneer with compact, tightly arranged folk songs and very few overdubs. He was largely content to tell his stories with just his voice and his guitar— a Spanish-style classical acoustic that’s now his signature, tuned down to give him a full and open sound. In Our Nature raised the stakes, adding handclaps, occasional synth textures and guest backing vocals by Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano (a friend and fellow Gothenburg resident). 

By the time he began working in earnest on the new album, González had been on a West African music listening binge, and it gradually spilled into his playing. The spirit of Ali Farka Touré steers the ringing guitar melodies and foot-stomped downbeat of “Stories We Build, Stories We Tell,” while the loping rhythms and layered guitars of “Afterglow” suggest the meditative cascades of kora player Toumani Diabaté. And the mood fits; as González sings, “All of this will be gone someday,” his voice even-toned and almost incantatory, he sounds at peace with the observation, immersed as he is in the abiding trance of the music. 

This same feeling of immersion and intimacy—an all-enveloping warmth that heightens the experience of listening to Vestiges & Claws for the first time—didn’t come easily in the studio. “When I was producing and mixing, I was aware that I wasn’t using all the tools and all the knowledge that I know my producer friends use,” González observes. “But I was happy just to learn and to try to create something interesting. Sometimes that comes from just sitting in my kitchen to record vocals and letting the sounds from the street come into the recording. I think I’ve been interested in that lo-fi aspect with all my recordings. I really enjoy listening to Lee Perry and having those happy coincidences happen, when you’re not aiming for the perfect sound. You’re more into trying to find a certain vibe. Maybe the mixes could be slightly better if I did them properly, with the help of some of my friends, but they ended up having a character that I’m sure would be different if I did it any other way.” 

Overall, there’s a clear sense of González setting out to make an artistic leap forward with this album, which says everything you need to know about why it sounds so good. Besides his willingness to be much bolder with his production moves—a hint of simulated tape distortion here (on the propulsive guitar line that drives “Let It Carry You”), or well-placed reverb on a vocal there (the opening refrain of “Leaf Off/The Cave,” which flies as close to dream pop as he might dare)—González has also grown more economical, incisive and poetic as a lyricist. “With the Ink of a Ghost,” originally meant for the Walter Mitty soundtrack, could have been a lost B-side to a Simon & Garfunkel single, embracing myth, mystery and romance in the autumnal vein of “Scarborough Fair.” The same holds true of the album’s first single, “Every Age,” an ominous parable that seems to feed off its booming, “Sound Of Silence” production style. 

“I had an early demo of ‘Every Age’ that was very simple,” González explains; the song’s original title was actually “Sacral,” in deference to its somber, sanctified mood. “I wanted to keep that and not flesh it out too much because I sort of felt like it could be played in a church, but also at a concert. So along with the sound, I wanted to have a lyric that felt interesting when you think about humanity and how to make big things—how to aim for something better, and not only as individuals, but as a society. It has a slightly naïve feeling to it, but basically, it’s about trying to zoom out and figure out where we’re headed, and make the best of this short-lived stay.” 

The video for “Every Age” accentuates his point. Shot with a portable camera that was tethered to a string of balloons and then sent skyward, the clip reminds us that we’re all hurtling through space together on Mother Earth—the pale blue dot that Carl Sagan so elegantly described as “a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.” It’s an idea that resonates strongly with González. In fact, he seems to have made it his personal mission to seek out the majesty in everyday minutiae, and vice versa. (And if you haven’t yet seen The Extraordinary Ordinary Life of José González, the critically lauded “anti-documentary” by Swedish directors Fredrik Egerstrand and Mikel Cee Karlsson released in 2010, then get your eyes on it posthaste. Offbeat, entertaining and way too witty for its own good, it shows González at his most relaxed and irreverent, expounding with aplomb on topics as disparate as photon transmission, Darwinism and sleep cycles—and quite a bit about creating music, of course.) 

As he preps a five-piece band for a spring tour of the U.S. and Canada—his first solo tour here since 2008—González feels like he is finally achieving a sound and a style that belong to him alone. While his music has drawn comparisons to everyone from Nick Drake to Cat Stevens (whose classic soundtrack for Harold And Maude has also provided a heavy dose of inspiration), he’s more interested and curious about how much further he can push his musical ideas, and readily admits to having needed an extended period in the woodshed just to get to where he is now. 

“For me, it was tougher than usual this time,” he reveals. “I mean, it was quite a long time that I worked on this album. But while I was in the studio or at home, writing and doing demos, they were starting to sound better and better. And when I finished writing all the songs, it sort of felt like I was continuing on the idea of flourishing as a person. It’s about making the best of one’s life, and if you’re lucky, being able to travel and see the world when you can.” 

Like any artist who feels the elation of passing through the arduous creation phase and coming out the other end with something magical, González can’t wait to share it with the world. “With this album and with this band, I think I’ll be able to reconnect with many of the people who have been following me in the States, and I’m looking forward to that. I feel like it’s gonna be fun to try to do songs like ‘Let It Carry You’ and ‘Leaf Off’ with a full band. It’s sort of a stripped-down band—it’s more acoustic—but I still think we’ll be able to play some pretty maximum stuff!”