Want to hear a new genre? Cameron Winter, lead singer of the alternative rock band “Geese,” is a 22-year- old from Brooklyn, New York, who lives with his parents and just released his first solo act, “Heavy Metal,” in December of last year. Despite the album’s name, it is the furthest thing from heavy metal. The best way I can describe his music, which feels like an entirely new genre inspired by the likes of Leonard Cohen, is a mix of indie blues and pop.
When you first listen to this album, you may be put off by the mumble-y, baritone vocals that make you tilt your head in confusion. But as the tracks progress, this unusual voice clashes with the soulful instrumentals to hit a strange itch in your mind.
“Drinking Age,” the fourth track on his album, cements itself as being an operatic, musical style ballad that I have come back to every day since hearing it. The melancholic piano chords lay under Winter’s slow, drawn out singing of his lyrics claiming that he has become “a piece of shit.” The song builds up a drug and alcohol addiction by speaking nonchalantly about this character’s heroin use, through small lines like “bag of rubber bands,” making a sly reference to rubber bands used as a tourniquet to take the drug.
I love the slight details added into these songs, such as the reference to rubber bands. These details give you hints at what is going on but do not reveal what is happening until you take the time to think about the vague language in the context of the track.
As the track reaches its climax, Winter emotionally and impressively draws out his final line of “This is who I’m gonna be / This way /A piece of meat.” The singer, whether that be Winter himself or a fictional character, acknowledges their destructive addiction, but instead of fighting it, he embraces it and claims he is that lifeless, used “piece of meat.” This goes against the popular notion that when you recognize an addiction, that is the first step in fighting it, as “Drinking Age” presents a story where recognizing that addiction actually worsens the problem.
“$0” is the longest track on the album and presents what I love about Winter’s work. “$0” is an empty melancholic hallucination. Winter builds up a powerful, entrapping piano melody into this feeling that “You’re making me feel like I’m a zero-dollar man.” Now, whether he is talking about a lover, his life or some other unknown is unclear, but you feel the emotion in his voice. This culminates into the breakdown of the track where Winter proclaims that, after his stint of feeling worthless, “God is actually real /I’m not kidding this time /I think God is actually for real.” It is powerful, weirdly humorous and intriguing. The song then shifts to a two-minute outro that repeats that same entrapping piano melody I mentioned earlier with what can only be described as a synth-like digitized string instrument, making the listener digest the strangeness of it all. I do not know what it is about these instrumentals Winter has created, but I found a great connection to this blend of sound I have never heard before.
If you have been in a music rut lately like I have and want something new, try out “Heavy Metal.” I was not expecting to feel any connection to a baritone, mumbled singer that, at first glance, seems to be stumbling over these tracks. But his strange, vague lyrics and ability to build up to musical climaxes over a wealth of melancholic instrumentals, makes me think he is here to stay in the music world, and I cannot wait to see what he does next.
