I remember seeing Heavy Metal posted on music blogs and being discussed upon its release in early December, but I didn’t give it a proper listen until recently, when it became impossible to ignore, seeing discussions of the album occurring in so many spaces. The people that admired it seemed to have felt it very deeply, so I decided to sit down and listen to it finally. What solidified that decision, was one review I read that mentioned his lyrics in ‘$0’,
‘God is real, God is real / I’m not kidding, God is actually real / I’m not kidding, God is actually real / I’m not kidding this time / I think God is actually for real / God is real, God is actually real / God is real, I wouldn’t joke about this/ I’m not kidding this time…’
Pitchfork writer Walden Green* described this moment as a type of “Joycean epiphany that most albums dont get one of… sounding like a man possessed of all the conviction of Moses stumbling down from Mount Sinai”. I think this captures well the resigned desperation of his lyrics. Similarly, most of the lyrics on this album are blatantly dismissive of any sort of distinguishable pattern, desperately cathartic and visual. Just when you think you’ve found transcendent meaning in one line, he continues into something obscure and abstract, and any semblance of structure that his lyricism once held has is then disintegrated like sand in your palms.
Terrifyingly cathartic and vulnerable, his lyrics are protected by their own cryptic nature, with an almost aphasic sound; just when you think you’ve grasped his unhinged similes, he flips it all back inside out in the next line, shaking you out and getting lost again. It is a constant chasing of trying to meet in the middle between what he means and what you think he means.
With other mentionable lyrics like ‘I love whatever kicks me hardest in the mouth’, ‘I need your feet more than you do’, ‘Nina I’m not nothing, but when you lie on the piano, I am reminded that I am stupid,’, for each lovely line there are tens bathed in abstraction, ‘songs are a hundred ugly babies/ I cant feed’. To quote Anthony Fantano, he either ‘severely needs a wellness check or he’s an alien’.
Adhering to structure only in its lack of it, Heavy Metal battles thematically with concepts of existentialism, spirituality, and hopelessness while remaining sardonically self-aware and abstaining from indulgence and aggrandizement.
Mixing vocal elements of Leonard Cohen and Rufus Wainright, it accomplishes feelings of despondence, futility, and devastated resignation. His Morrison-esque falsettos ring out like something desperate and heavy trying to rise out of him, only managing to brush the surface before falling back down again, back to the depths, where most of his album occupies. Virtuosic, loose, and improvisational, much of the strength and appeal of the album is in its whimsical music videos, filmed in different locations in New York. We are bearing witness to him sitting in his creative process, where he is often obscured by the passing of cars, or children running and flocks of birds flying past.
Almost as interesting as its contents is the story of its creation. Composed and recorded in a series of ‘abandoned basements, taxi back seats, and in impromptu jam sessions in public spaces’**. Winter also recorded in various guitar centres, playing until he was invariably kicked out, and then moving onto the next one. In a perhaps very original feat, Winter also utilised and recorded with amateur musicians sourced off of Craigslist, including a disinherited cousin of John Lennon, a five-year-old bassist, and a Boston steel-worker cellist.***
Heavy Metal stands as a testament to what music and its elements can be composed of; how it can be mutually beneficial for the listener and the creator while testing the limits of abstraction and dynamism. Winter shows us the productivity of play and completely unhinged self-expression, succeeding in making a musical ruckus; at times sounding sophisticated and others wild and rambling.
The whole of the album feels like a spiritual freefall, erupting from the mucks of depression and addiction, rising in and out of dissociation, and losing all of its sense, like teeth gradually falling out over the span of its run time. A project of catharsis and experiment, it is advantageous in its edge.
*https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/cameron-winter-heavy-metal/
**https://realgoblin.com/2024/12/06/review-heavy-metal-cameron-winter/
*** https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/features/interviews/cameron-winter-not-kidding-this-time
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