José González has announced his first new album in six years. Local Valley is out September 17 via Mute. Check out the album’s second song “Visions” below. 

“We are the apes that are starting to understand the universe and our place in it,” González said of the song in a statement. “We are changing our surroundings in an exceedingly rapid pace, so much that we’re becoming stewards of our planet whether we like it or not. As Stewart Brand said, ‘We are as gods and we have to get good at it.’ The lyrics came to me in early February 2020 just as there were more and more tweets about the possible pandemic. The topic of the song felt very timely. You can hear the birds and ambient sounds from the veranda, along with a layer of synth loops in the background.”

The announcement of Local Valley follows the February release of “El Invento,” González’s first Spanish-language release and his first new song in years. Local Valley is the Swedish singer-songwriter first since 2015’s Vestiges & Claws. That album came eight years after his previous solo full-length, 2007’s In Our Nature. He also released music with the project Junip and his Live In Europe album with the String Theory orchestra arrived in 2018.

Local Valley:

01 El Invento
02 Visions
03 The Void
04 Horizons
05 Head On
06 Valle Local
07 Lasso ln
08 Lilla G
09 Swing
10 Tjomme
11 Line of Fire
12 En Stund Pa Jorden
13 Honey Honey