Heavy Metal- Cameron Winter

Charlie Nayler casts his eye over Geese's Cameron Winter's recent solo exploration...

In a Reddit AMA, Cameron Winter opined that for the rest of Geese to have made this album with him, “they would be punching down as musicians”; a statement that at first feels self-deprecating to those unfamiliar with the genre-bending rock group Winter has fronted since 2016. But for those initiated, this is perfectly understandable. On his debut solo album, gone is the raw power of Winter’s vocals and the raucously expansive sonic palettes of tracks such as Cowboy Nudes and 2122 from 2023’s 3D Country. In their place is a more intimate affair, with Winter’s beautifully abstract lyrics presented as a centrepiece swaddled by the warmth each instrumental provides.

Opener The Rolling Stones is maybe the best example of this. A lilting guitar carries throughout the track a sense of near nostalgia alongside a slowly densifying backdrop of percussive shakers and a bass so engorged it threatens to flatten the rest of the track. Fortunately, the addition of chopped vocals, strings and synthesiser fills out the high end on the choruses, lifting the track into a fully realised ballad about the struggle of creativity and, like the titular band’s songwriter Brian Jones, the havoc it can wreak on the artist.

Nausicaa (Love Will Be Revealed) and Love Takes Miles story two experiences of love. The former describes a feeling of longing, both to understand the feelings of another and to be with that person. In its third verse, “I am blind, and you are only” is delivered by a voice near breaking and followed by a timid refrain of “I want you”, framing the tale of desire the song creates. The latter, a track in the vein of Winter’s work with Geese, has attracted a small sense of virality, according to my TikTok FYP at least. The driving drums throughout the song are accompanied by bright piano, a muddy bass and a warping synthesiser. Winter sings “Love will call when you've got enough under your arms” – As the title of the track lays out, love in all its forms takes effort, and it won’t always arrive when it’s easy for you, but that’s the beauty of it.

The next track, Drinking Age, is a striking piano ballad whose lyrics detail a disillusion of and reckoning with one’s future self. The opening verse closes with

“Today I met who I’m going to be from now on and he’s a piece of shit”

Winter’s climbing vocals shows senses of both contentment and contempt with his future self, after which a single bell opens a soft chorus of melancholic horns. If there is a moment from this album that could make your eyes well, it’s this. Opening with a soft wail, lead single $0 strikes the same sonic chord and fills it with an array of strings, both melodic and percussive. This underpins Winter’s rising vocals and gentle piano to deliver a beautiful performance of feeling truly worthless to one’s lover; his repeated calls to water and faith lays the singers longing for a new beginning bare across 7 minutes of jilted instrumentation.

For such a lush album, you’d expect only the best of recording studios and equipment. Which in some part is true, Lana Del Ray and Arctic Monkeys audio engineer Loren Humphrey lends his hand to drums and production across the album. On the other hand, Winter has admitted to having recorded portions of the album in some peculiar spaces. In the back of a taxi, abandoned basements and public jam sessions are listed alongside two recording studios in the credits, and sometimes this album really does feel like you’re being sung to in a small, cramped car. A little awkward but endearing, nonetheless.

Sonically reminiscent of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot era Wilco, We’re thinking the same thing is beautiful yet indecipherable; it seemingly details a couple tiring of their relationship and being driven away from each other. The next, Nina + Field of Cops, is another struggle with one’s own art. A cacophony of piano notes and guitar drones builds up underneath Winter’s musings, culminating in a confession to the titular Nina, who, from posts on social media, appears to be the great Nina Simone. To Cameron, her music is so powerful that it ‘breaks windows’ and leads him to feel that his work does not compare. Unfortunately, these tracks do bring forth my sole major gripe with this album – the lyrics, while rich with storytelling once you spend time with them, can appear a little too vague upon first listen.

Like the album opener, the waltzing Cancer of the Skull describes a struggle with his own art. To Cameron’s wry humour, each song is a “hundred ugly babies” to the narrator, whose mundane life is so dedicated to his art that it has become a cancer to him – an uncontrollable disease of creativity. Try As I May slows it back down with a rhythm that feels like it’s falling over itself in the best way possible. The lyrics describe a struggle against a metaphorical wall that Cameron and someone who supports him through these endeavours– a hope for growth through love.

These songs, so filled with wit and passion, are in their entirety somehow greater than the sum of their parts and that’s what makes them so individually powerful; Despite any initial wariness you may have, it really does pay off to spend time with the wonderful mysticisms set out here on Heavy Metal. 

Charlie Nayler

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Edited by Alice Beard

Official Heavy Metal LP cover image courtesy of Cameron Winter, Video courtesy of Cameron Winter on Youtube