Cameron Winter live in London: Gen Z superstar and Geese frontman caps a remarkable year
After releasing two of the best albums of the last 12 months, Winter’s gig at the Roundhouse sees him gorgeously rework songs from debut solo record ‘Heavy Metal’ in front of a crowd of disciples
This coming weekend, it will be a year since 23-year-old New Yorker Cameron Winter released his debut solo album, Heavy Metal, to relatively small fanfare. As insinuated in a recent profile of Winter’s band Geese in GQ, the album was “intentionally buried amid year-end release-schedule doldrums by his label because of low commercial expectations”. What a difference a year makes.
The 12 months that have followed the release of the album have seen an incredible groundswell of love for Heavy Metal. Alongside Geese’s extraordinary third album Getting Killed, released in September and met with universal acclaim, the two albums have placed Winter at the centre of the alternative Gen Z zeitgeist – a hero for a new era. As countless memes have said in recent months: Brat Summer is over, get ready for Cameron Winter.
Heavy Metal was Winter’s solo debut, but sounded as though it came from a songwriter who’s been doing this for decades. Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and more can all be heard in his flexible and impressive voice, while his songwriting feels completely timeless.
Just a few days after a triumphant Geese tour of the United States wraps up, Winter rounds off an extraordinary year with his biggest UK solo show to date at the Roundhouse. Arriving at the apex of a year that has seen two careers explode simultaneously for the young songwriter, this show could be described as a victory lap – if only Winter was interested in anything of the sort. Instead, he plays his Steinway piano alone on stage with minimal lighting and facing away from the majority of the audience.
“Turn around!” someone from the upper seating section yells towards the singer after a few songs. He slowly pivots his body on the piano stool to let half the venue see his face for the first time. “Is this enough for you people?!” he smirks, kicking out a leg and giving the baying audience at least some of what they want.
As a gesture it feels very Dylanesque, and Winter has the same quality as the greats he stands on the shoulders of. When he turns away, you strain to follow him. Songs from Heavy Metal, repurposed here for solo piano performance, swing wildly from the delightful major chords of sleeper hit ‘Love Takes Miles’ and the brash chaos of ‘Nina + Field of Cops’ to the mournful ‘$0’, which sees Winter play with the patience and close ear the audience are giving him.
He plays the song’s final piano notes incredibly quietly, as if showing that his newfound status as a beloved Gen Z icon won’t see him disappear into becoming a rockstar cliche, but instead use the pindrop silence in a room packed with disciples to double down on the idiosyncrasies and brilliance that have got him here.
Cameron Winter played:
‘Try as I May’
‘Emperor XIII in Shades’
‘The Rolling Stones’
‘Love Takes Miles’
‘Drinking Age’
‘Serious World’
‘Nausicaä (Love Will Be Revealed)’
‘If You Turn Back Now’
‘Vines’
‘Nina + Field of Cops’
‘$0’
‘Take It With You’
‘Cancer of the Skull’