Cameron Winter live at the Roundhouse: Suddenly, I get it now
In the long queue outside Cameron Winter’s Roundhouse show, I barely dared to whisper it, leaning into my friends and saying as quiet as I could: “I hope I actually like this”.
The jury has been out. Between his solo record and Geese’s latest victory of a third album, Winter is absolutely everywhere. He hasn’t just captured the zeitgeist, but he has it in a headlock in this distinct way where to say that you don’t like this work almost feels like admitting you don’t like music, or don’t like good music, or don’t ‘get’ good music.
He’s been granted that lofty and mythical status in which Cameron Winter is a good musician, positioned specifically as a clever artist who is doing structurally advanced and interesting things, pushing the limits of genre and pushing his own poetry. So to say you don’t like it is kind of like saying you don’t like jazz – some people will look at you like you’re dumb.
However, still, the jury has been out. There are moments on both the Winter solo album and Geese’s albums that I find completely and utterly astounding, like the building intensity of ‘$0’ or the howling sincerity of ‘Au Pays Du Cocaine’. But then, after a little while, something in his vocals scratches my brain wrong, and it’s almost like a visceral reaction demands I turn it off, right now. It can hit a point where his unique voice becomes abrasive, and though I barely dare to whisper it in the queue, my friends, who have seen him live before, assure me that it will not happen here.
Within seconds of Winter taking to the stage, where he sits solo at the piano with his back turned to his crowd, lit only by one single spotlight, one thing becomes clear. Winter’s album is the worst of him. Heavy Metal is him at his weakest, and here, just like this, is the artist at his best – alone, stripped back and blowing, following the feeling through extended outros, jazz piano additions, repetitions that feel right or shortcuts where clearly, to him, the moment feels done.
While the album forces him into a more rigid structure despite the fact that his songwriting would never once be characterised as that, a live set lets him be loose. I watch as some crowd members desperately want to dance along to ‘Love Takes Miles’ as it is on the album with a more jovial band behind it and a beat to it, but he doesn’t allow them it.
He doesn’t allow a single beat throughout the entire night, as start to finish, there is nothing more than his jazz-informed piano playing that now clearly shows the sign of his Nina Simone obsession. Stripping away any foundation that any of his songs might have, they all become fluid, his voice becomes smooth and rich over the top, and in that, the only buoy to hold onto is his lyrics.
From the back of a room packed with perhaps the tallest men in London, I can’t see a thing. Sometimes I can see the top of the spotlight; other times, Winter’s stage is either cast in complete darkness or blinding light. The man never turns around, answering a call from a crowd member keen to see his face with simply, “Is this not enough for you?”
It does something weird to the room. Already, with the music sounding like this, the Winter show isn’t at all indie or alternative; it is straight-up gospel. It’s the type of gospel that Simone was, that Leonard Cohen was, that Bob Dylan continues to be. It’s the type of gospel that Nick Cave touches on so often, with all these artists taking poems, putting them to music and seeing that the result feels more like scripture. With his back turned to us, that sense grows as it feels less like the room is gathered here to see Cameron Winter, but as if we all just happen to be here and he happens to be up there playing, like a congregation here to listen, and he just happens to have been granted the message.
It sounds culty. Everything spoken about Winter or Geese lately sounds culty, and seemingly everyone is completely obsessed. But stood there, almost gasping at the sheer beauty of the unreleased track ‘If You Turn Back Now’, feeling my eyes prick with tears from the emotion in his voice, only being brought back to earth by the pin-drop silence being broken by the loudest applause i’ve ever heard in a mid-size venue as 3,000 people sound more like 30,000 – I get it. I get it now.
