Released last month, the Geese frontman’s solo LP is nothing like its title in genre, but a brilliantly eccentric, eclectic, inventive, surreal mosaic of dream-like DIY oddness – blues, folk, pop and psych rolled up in droll humour, existential dread and creative patchwork streams of the sub-conscious and non-sequitur. Preluded by previous standalone singles and Song of the Day Vines and Take It With You in October, Winter pushes the envelope with a delicious fusion of off offbeat yet catchy shuffling tunes, his voice at times grumbling and mumbling close-mic, like Tom Waits at a damp basement old piano, at other sustaining notes long or high falsetto and a little vibrato, not unlike Rufus Wainwright. Delicious twinklings of guitar, gentle percussion and other sounds permeate and there are some truly beautiful melodies here, particularly on opener The Rolling Stones and Love Takes Miles. But perhaps it’s the lyrics that are the most double-take bizarre here, no two lines predictable or entire easy to fathom, twisting with a darkly humorous, hallucinatory non-logic that could come from the brain of William S Burroughs. “I will keep breaking cups until my left hand looks wrong / Until my miracle drugs write the miracle song / I will keep rolling down until my best shirt rolls off / Until the conga line behind me is a thousand chickens long,” are the opening lines to first song The Rolling Stones, one that also references Brian Jones’ swimming pool death and Jon Hinkley Jr. who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan. Nina + Field of Cops is crammed with artfully odd images, such as “these great spirals, diagrams, and vegetables and talking red trees” and “motorcycle made of rocks eat this hotel key and ride away”. The album plays with perspectives and inverts ideas constantly. Cancer of the Skull uses the disease as a metaphor for art and creativity, and there’s much more to unfold and ponder upon here from the surreal sense of worthlessness in $0 to the Homer’s Odyssey referencing Nausicaä (Love Will Be Revealed). Supremely different. Released on Partisan Records / Play It Again Sam.
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