Hearing Cameron Winter croon of God, Jesus and the devil in the former Methodist chapel of Manchester’s Albert Hall may seem appropriate, but this superficial link belies the 23-year-old’s talent for the secular and absurd. Winter works primarily in contrasts: poppy instrumentation with off-kilter song structures; lyrics that are abstract yet never impenetrable; boyish charm wrapped in the confidence expected from a singer-songwriter twice his age.
In this intimate show, Winter hunches over his piano, whittling away at songs as if the audience are peering through the window of his private rehearsal space. It would be the more conventional choice for him to tour with a band, especially after the one-two punch of his solo debut album Heavy Metal late last year and his band Geese’s Getting Killed in September. But Winter doesn’t do things simply: every song tonight gets a new arrangement. He tickles and pummels reverb-soaked keys in ways that transform and reconstruct Heavy Metal’s foundations into something more alive than the recording. It is stripped back, but never stark.
