Cameron Winter of Geese Releases New Singles
Song review and artist highlight via Nash Jones - @_nash_jones
“Hell yeah… Let’s bring some fucking good old fashioned rock and roll back to the charts motherfucker,” Cameron Winter posted in swooping cursive font to Instagram Reels. The clip itself features several pictures of the vocalist, best-known for New York-based rock band Geese, staring directly into the camera with various unenthused expressions on his face. The audio along with the clip is from one of his two new solo singles, Take It With You, featuring melancholic vocalizations and acoustic guitar.
Take It With You features vivid, location-based lyrics. These are also very prevalent in Geese projects, with their critically-acclaimed 2023 album, 3D Country being an interdimensional journey told through the perspective of various narrators in multiple places throughout time, throughout the world. Take It With You is an acoustic track of emotional devastation and hurt, yet, in the end, apathy. In a dulcet tone, Winter tells the listener, “Cowboy north ‘til you reach the Dakotas/ Ride the highways in your Cadillac/ You could make a fortune panning gold in Sarasota/ Just don’t come back.”
Winter has a distinct and vivid writing style. The title track on 3D Country, written from the perspective of a cowboy on a psychedelic trip, refers both to the wild west and then this narrator’s past lives, one of which seems to be in ancient Rome, “Back in the Trastevere.” In the song Crusades, from the same album, Winter embodies a crusader. He proclaims, “This ancient country is full of snakes/ Sweet Nicaea, open your doors.”
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While many lyrics written by him reference some sort of faraway journey, Winter grounds the narrative in a “here” and “now” in the chorus of Take It With You. “I found a keepsake of you/ By the window in the kitchen/ Take it with you when you leave.” Being such a specific and tangible location, the listener could likely imagine their own kitchen window, making the line hit that much harder. The personal feeling of the mundane and straightforwardness can be a really interesting place to return to after journeying somewhere else. However, Winter tells the listener in the second verse, “If you’re aching to come home, remember/ It’s not here anymore.” There is an alienation from comfort and that which one once knew, essentially being told, “take your things and leave, you’re not welcome here anymore,” which hits like a punch to the gut despite the fact that Winter is singing softly.
Winter’s singing voice is another distinct factor of his artistry. Whether he’s leaning into rock vocalizations in Geese tracks like Mysterious Love, fun and upbeat songs like, Killing My Borrowed Time, or soft and melodic like in the case of Take It With You, he has a classy and orotund tone not often heard today. He croons on the verses of 3D Country, and leans into some vocal theatrics on Geese song Undoer. While the vocal style used on Take It With You is unlike what is used in many songs he sings, it is unmistakably him, singing with a soft vibrato, almost lilting at times.
The lyrics themselves could be seen as malicious, a striking juxtaposition to the sound of the track, but the part that’s the most crushing is the final verse, in which the narrator simply states his apathy and lack of thought to the person about whom he is singing. “Your traveling companion can be your memories/ You can lie awake with thoughts of simpler times/ You can love me from afar if that’s what puts you at ease/ But you won’t be on my mind.” He expresses lack of interest in creating any new memories with this person before returning to the chorus the final time, ending on, “Take it with you when you leave.”
Take It With You is a heartbreaking track about navigating the complexities of hurt and efforts to find some type of solace, with a vivid narrator and a captivating voice.
