At the compositional crossroads between contemporary folk and choral hymn, Cameron Winter defines a new era of indie by reinventing the now largely oversaturated genre with simply a croak. The Geese frontman’s inaugural solo project, Heavy Metal (2024), is a monumental yet understated record that seems to increasingly reinvigorate the long-standing affection for the singer-songwriter ethos. Of course, adopting the same melancholia historically plagued upon the indie genre and only intensified by post-2020 chamber rock renditions, the album is simultaneously bleak, isolated, humorous, introspective, and a little bit funky— it's certainly no secret why he’s so quickly amassed an army of self-deprecating white men that resonate with his lyrical musings on religion, existentialism, and (often chronically online) modernity.
On May 14th, Winter, characteristically dressed in all black, quietly took stage at the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC) as an opener to well-known alt-country act Waxahatchee. The Brooklyn local’s first solo performance in North Carolina began with two unreleased singles that, to no one’s surprise, proceeded with the same religious-inspired melodies hyper-prominent within his debut record. Alone with an upright piano, wailing “if you love me, flood the world again,” biblical references repeatedly ascend to almost all of Winter’s subject matter. Consequently, his widely-released Drinking Age and The Rolling Stones entered his setlist as all-too-familiar coming-of-age ballads. His sparse, quirky, and comedic interludes between songs seemingly contrasted the often-agonizing lyrical performances, yet this very-on-brand witticism mirrors the self-awareness (of both him and his musical influences) apparent throughout his discography. By the time Winter concluded his setlist with an extended, alternative-lyric execution of $0 (his poignantly, crescendo-oriented and theistic eulogy to a tumultuous relationship), the audience appeared divided between bewilderment and awe.
As Waxahatchee finally entered the stage to headline the night’s performance, she continued to praise Winter, claiming Heavy Metal was her favorite release of the year prior. Waxahatchee’s latest record, Tigers Blood (2024), includes a series of songs that she explains were inspired by her brief time in Durham. Of these, she dedicated her performance of Lone Star Lake to Winter himself. Though her performance may have tonally juxtaposed Winter’s somberness with saccharine, the pair's collective performance made one thing absolutely clear — the contemporary folk revival is alive, well, and ready for a new dawn of artists fit to push the genre to both new and familiar heights of single-string magnitude. Winter’s northern rasp may oppose the classical-folk’s southern twang, but his (not-so) Heavy Metal has certainly saved Durham’s spoiled listeners from any crises of faith in the folk or indie genres.
