Cameron Winter: The 22-Year-Old Indie Maverick Stirring Souls

Cameron Winter: The 22-Year-Old Indie Maverick Stirring Souls with His Haunting Voice and Surreal

‘People think I’ve gone crazy’: Cameron Winter on Tears, Transcendence, and the Strange Beauty of Going Solo

The sign in the church simply reads: “God is real.” It might appear to be a typical declaration from a house of worship, but it wasn’t a priest or preacher who posted it. Instead, it was placed there by Cameron Winter, the 22-year-old frontman of New York rock band Geese and the creative force behind one of the year’s most enigmatic solo debuts.

Winter is performing his first UK solo show at St Matthias Church in North London. And while you might leave unconvinced of the divine, what transpires inside does resemble a kind of spiritual experience. Seated at a piano, hunched and intense, Winter’s fingers sweep across the keys as he delivers cryptic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics in a voice so fragile it threatens to collapse, yet somehow remains commanding, soulful, and almost otherworldly. You find yourself wondering who – or what – he is.

When we meet the next day at his record label’s London office, Winter appears as he does on stage: tall, long-haired, seemingly shy. Initially reserved, he quickly reveals a sly and understated sense of humor. When I tell him I was surprised it was just him and a piano, given how textured and experimental Heavy Metal is, he deadpans: “Yeah, well, I was supposed to be playing with a 10-piece band but they didn’t show.”

“You have to get your consciousness to the point where its stream is interesting”

His debut solo album Heavy Metal is a shapeshifting, lyrical labyrinth. It’s packed with surreal one-liners (“Cancer of the 80s / I was beat by ukuleles”), shape-shifting sonic textures, and the unexpected radio-friendly glimmer of “Love Takes Miles.” Comparisons have been made to Dylan, Cohen, and Waits. Yet perhaps the closest spiritual relative is Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks—not so much for its sound as its intention: the search for transcendence through art.

In his live set, Winter makes direct references to God and faith, culminating in a startling moment during the song “$0” when he chants, “God is real, God is real, I’m not kidding, God is actually real…” over and over. What does he mean by that? After a minute-long pause so extended it borders on performance art, he shrugs: “Just … the big guy deserves a shout out every once in a while, you know?”

Is he religious? Another eternity passes. “Yeah,” he finally murmurs, “it seems like it?”

Recording with a Child, Writing with Thin Blood

Winter’s creative process sounds like something from a myth—at least at first. He claims Heavy Metal was recorded in various Guitar Center locations around New York City and features a five-year-old on bass. Is he just spinning stories?

“No, listen!” he says, suddenly animated. “A musician friend of mine brought his young nephew along one day. We handed him this comically large bass and showed him a few notes for fun. But he played it, and it sounded amazing. He ended up replacing a lot of the bass on the record.”

Then there’s his talk of using recreational blood-thinners. “Don’t we all like thin blood when it’s not a week night?” he jokes, barely hiding a grin.

“They stopped raising their eyebrows a long time ago”

Winter’s artistic evolution has been dramatic. Geese, formed with school friends in 2016, first made waves with their angular post-punk. Their second album, 3D Country, was a wild, genre-defying trip that veered into psychedelic territory. Yet even that wasn’t enough freedom for Winter. “I don’t really use setlists anymore,” he says. “I’m free as a bird.”

That freedom spills over into his lyrics—equal parts Joycean and Beat Generation, yet somehow unique. He hesitates to call it stream-of-consciousness. “Most of my consciousness is like, ‘I need to pee’ or ‘I should get gas,’” he laughs. “The hard part is getting your mind to the point where its stream is worth writing down.”

Critics have compared his solo voice to Rufus Wainwright, Micah P. Hinson, and Devendra Banhart. But really, it doesn’t sound like anyone else. “The disturbing part is this is me trying to sing normally,” he says, wryly. “And then the first review was like, ‘Cameron’s weird voice is even more disturbing now.’ I was like, ‘Damn it!’”

“Do whatever you want—but you’ll find out why most people don’t”

Initial reactions to Heavy Metal were mixed—even among close friends. “I don’t blame them,” Winter shrugs. “They probably thought it would sound like Geese, just slightly worse, like most solo records do.”

Even his father, a composer for film and TV, tried to prepare him for disappointment. “He told me, ‘Do whatever you want. But you may find out why most people don’t.’”

Turns out, doing whatever he wanted worked just fine. The album drew rave reviews, led to a profile in The New York Times, and landed Winter a performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Does he feel vindicated?

“I thought I would,” he says, “but not really. I kind of believed it when people said the album wouldn’t do well. So it’s great that it has, but I’m not doing a victory lap or anything.”

He admits success brought a strange emptiness. “You’re finally doing the thing you dreamed of—but it doesn’t feel how you imagined. I’ve got to get over that shit. Boo-hoo,” he adds with a smirk.

“Who the hell is satisfied with the world?”

Despite its moments of absurdist humor, Heavy Metal is also steeped in melancholy and a modern sense of discontent. When I mention this, Winter again falls silent for a stretch that feels almost geological. “I mean, who the hell is satisfied with the world?” he finally asks. “Saying the world sucks is like writing a song called Donuts Taste Good.”

He believes his work carries more emotional nuance. Heavy Metal can be funny, surreal, and oddly life-affirming—but it rarely feels lighthearted. “Some people can write good songs about being happy,” he says. “They put those in Despicable Me. I got asked to do one of those too, but I couldn’t come up with anything.” (He’s kidding. Probably.)

A Communion of Confusion

After the Heavy Metal tour wraps, Winter will rejoin Geese, who have a new album planned “for the next Winter Olympics.” That record will, as always, represent a new stylistic pivot.

He says his solo shows have drawn very different crowds than Geese’s did. “A lot less nitrous oxide in the parking lot,” he notes. “A lot more reverence than I expected. I usually try to break that by doing something silly.”

At the St Matthias show, he drew laughs by swapping “dollar” for “quid” in one song. “That broke them,” he says, clearly delighted.

But more than reverence or laughter, what he values most from audiences is confusion. “I like it when people don’t know how to react.” During the “God is real” segment, some people laugh, convinced he’s lost his mind. Others cry.

“To have one song that can do both,” he says with quiet pride, “that feels very good.”