You wouldn’t expect an album titled Heavy Metal to be performed in a church. But then again, nothing about Cameron Winter’s debut solo album, which he performed at Greenpoint’s St. John’s Lutheran on April 21st and 22nd as part of his worldwide tour, is as expected — one of the many reasons it blew up when it was first released in December of 2024. It’s also one of the reasons the 22-year-old singer-songwriter, who only recently moved out of his parents’ house into a Bed Stuy apartment with roommates, has earned something of a cult following.
The 6-foot-3 artist first came into the public eye with Geese, a psychedelic country-rock band he and four friends started in 2016 while attending Brooklyn Friends School and Little Red School. In 2020, Geese released home-produced songs that sparked attention that high school students only ever dream of. Soon after, they signed with Pias and Partisan Records, the New York label that jumpstarted bands like the Idles and Fontaines D.C. From there, Geese sold out Bushwick nightclub Elsewhere among other famed NYC venues, and snagged a coveted spot opening for the King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard during their 2024 tour.
Heavy Metal has launched Winter into a new stratosphere, earning rave reviews and sold-out concerts. In fact, I nearly missed the St. John’s Lutheran show. When he first announced his tour, I was in a meeting, and the tickets swiftly sold out. (He later added shows, including a free pop-up which was mobbed by fans, after seeing the initial demand.) Crushed, I joined the waitlist. As I was waiting for my mom to pick me up at the train station over Easter weekend, I heard a gentle ping from my pocket: Tickets are available, but you only have 20 minutes to buy them, so get in quick, the waitlist app told me.
When my mom asked me to describe the artist I was feverishly purchasing tickets for, I gestured at Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, and Rufus Wainwright as comparisons, but none of them truthfully fit. Despite its nostalgic tone, unlike so much contemporary art, his music doesn’t mimic or fetishize the past; it’s too singular and idiosyncratic to ever veer into saccharine cosplay.
The only way to describe Heavy Metal, which is not heavy metal music at all, is to speak to how it makes you feel. It’s easy to find a home in Winter’s cavernous voice, at turns familiar, sensitive, and so full of love. His lyrics teeter between devastating and hilarious — “Like Brian Jones, I was born to swim,” he warbles on the opening track “The Rolling Stones” — a contradictory interplay that works all too well with the chaos and absurdity of today’s world. Despite its vulnerability and at-times heartbreaking moments, it’s hard not to gulp down Heavy Metal in one delicious sitting.
The lore around Winter’s album has also contributed to the buzz. Winter has said all of the following about making Heavy Metal: He got help from a 5-year-old bassist named Jaden, a cellist who works as a steelworker in Boston, and a mix of musicians from Craigslist. He recorded songs in various Guitar Center locations across New York City, picking up the production every time management booted him.
A month before his album launched, in an “AMA” [Ask Me Anything] Reddit thread, Winter proselytized the unforeseen consequences of the soon-to-be-released Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown: “The youth will come to understand Bob Dylan as a cool righteous hipster with abs.” The more I hear about Winter, the more it sounds like a game of two truths and a lie, but based on how accessible and universal Heavy Metal is, I’m inclined to believe every word wholeheartedly — almost as you would someone preaching from an altar.
At the show
Clearly I wasn’t the only one clamoring to hear Winter’s live arrangements: When I arrived at the church, a line of people in baggy black clothing snaked around the quiet block, perfumed by trees hesitantly starting to bloom. After waiting for 30 minutes, we shuffled into the drafty building. In the outlandish, magical spirit of a Cameron Winter concert, I happened to stand behind his mom in the bathroom line, which I discovered when a man greeted her and told her that as the singer’s mom, she should be allowed to cut. She wore a grey t-shirt and jeans, and swatted this idea away, claiming her son cared about the democracy of the queue.
Later in the evening, I saw three-time Grammy-winning singer Phoebe Bridgers and Emmy-winning actor and creator Bo Burnham, which dispelled the feeling that this was a cozy neighborhood gathering.
The show opened with hymns spilling from the church’s rickety speakers, and the mostly twentysomething crowd giggled nervously before the church’s pastor, Dr. Katrina Foster, stepped up to the altar to share some information about St. John’s Lutheran. It wasn’t until she remarked on how lucky we all were to secure such coveted tickets that I remembered we were at a concert, not a service. As Winter launched into his set list, a reverent buzz blanketed the creaky pews. When, towards the end of the show, he reached the bridge of “$0” — “God is real, God is 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.” — I saw heads in the audience swivel around, unsure how to handle the sincerity.
Listening to Heavy Metal, you can’t help but feel that he’s written these songs for only you. You can imagine him hulking over a piano, wrestling with these lyrics as they spill from him like a flood. How many 22-year-old artists can you imagine putting pen to physical paper? His songs feel so personal and intense that listening to them alongside a group of concert-goers felt a little exposed or vulnerable — I was embarrassed by how sincere my reverence for his songs had grown in private. But at the same time, they feel expansive; all are welcome, like at a third space, or a church. He’s reckoning with massive questions — about faith, love, violence, death — with casual improvisation in a way only young people can do.
Winter is not the only indie frontman who went solo to much acclaim in the past year: Wednesday’s MJ Lenderman released Manning Fireworks in September of 2024 and Water From Your Eyes’s This Is Lorelei released Box for Buddy, Box for Star in June. Whether these three represent an emerging trend is maybe a stretch, but Winter’s album — a saturated distillation of his sound and persona — illustrates how going out on your own sometimes allows for something incomparably singular and rigorously creative.
