Cameron Winter Review: A Transcending Beauty in the Unorthodox

St. Matthias Church, Stoke Newington

The anticipated singer-songwriter strips his debut release to its haunting core; a masterclass of folk-driven vocals, clashing piano pangs, and unorthodox songwriting fraught within Stoke Newington's stoic church.

Amidst the changing of seasons, beneath the gothic arches of Stoke Newington’s St. Matthias Church, Cameron Winter sauntered into the spotlight in his lonesome. The Geese frontman’s first solo album, Heavy Metal, released quietly toward the back-end of last year, is a fractured, tender record: chaotic, crooked, and curiously serene in the same breath. Tonight, sans entourage or technical flourishes, Winter offered something even more primitive: an unraveling of self through the power of one's voice and their accompanied piano.

There’s something deeply uncanny about Winter’s stage presence. Emerging into the dimly lit sanctuary alone, he cuts an unassuming figure—yet within seconds, he commands the room like a conjurer. 'Try as I May' incites a yearning piano ballad which sets the tone for the hour to come: fragile, deliberate, and emotionally decimating. A falsetto range which flutters above the keys, akin to Thom Yorke's wavering vibrato, which flutters like candlelight in wind; delicate but defiant. The absence of the record’s woodwinds and brass only clarifies the core of the song—his voice, always just on the edge of breaking, tantalisingly holds everything together.

This is songwriting built from contradiction. Tracks like 'The Rolling Stones' and 'Drinking Age' veer between sardonic wit and brutal introspection. “Until the conga line behind me is a thousand chickens long,” Winter quips in the former, before slipping back into the melancholic surrealism that has become his signature. The latter throws emotional gut-punches, containing a line that hangs like incense in the vaulted air: “Today I met who I’m gonna be and he’s a piece of shit.”

There is catharsis in the discomfort. 'Cancer of the Skull' and 'Nina + Field of Cops' dig deeper still, channeling the spoken-word mysticism of Patti Smith and the cracked gospel of Tom Waits. The former is confessional and unsteady, the latter a fever dream, Winter pounding out dissonant chords like a man possessed. “Backpacking upon the fingers of the real,” he sings—cries—mutters—before the track spirals into its crescendo, unhinged and euphoric.

Winter’s piano playing is modest, even playful at times, but therein lies its power: stripped of gloss, it feels immediate and sentient. Like much of Heavy Metal, these songs feel unearthed rather than composed—found in a dream, scribbled in a notebook, hummed into a recorder in the early hours of the morning.

The encore begins with 'Nausicaä (Love Will Be Revealed)', a song which nods to his folk-rock sensibilities, albeit filtered through a prism of modern disillusionment. It’s a brief beam of light before the final descent: 'I Will Let You Down'. Stark, broken, and indelible, it ends not with a grand flourish but with a halting clang and the quickly-ushered exit of a man who’s revealed an exorcising mirror and departed.

In the right room, with the right stillness, some performances transcend the notion of a gig. Tonight, Cameron Winter exorcised within these parameters. The church setting was more than aesthetic—ritualistic if anything; reminiscent of PJ Harvey or Nick Cave's notoriously religious performances. And if Heavy Metal was the whisper, then this performance was the resounding echo: mournful, strange, and wholly human. A remarkable debut, blemished by raw imperfections, yet unabashedly alive.

8/10

Cameron Winter's debut LP, Heavy Metal, is out now via Partisan Records and can be found below.