Geese frontman Cameron Winter wasn’t sure how people would receive his solo debut, Heavy Metal. “I don’t think they expected my solo album to sound like that,” he told The Guardian. “They thought it would be like my band, only slightly less good, like most solo records are.”
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To his surprise, the album was well received. Leaving audiences in tears and fans online obsessing over the meaning behind his sprawling lyrics. However, Winter’s most popular track, “Love Takes Miles”, reveals something more concrete. Though not without unexpected turns. Just like the subject he’s singing about.
About “Love Takes Miles”
Many go looking for love. Set up online profiles, hit the bars, get set up by friends. But Winter explains that love often has inconvenient timing.
Love will call
When you’ve got enough under your arms,
Oh, oh, mama.
Love will call,
Love will make you fit it all in the car,
Oh, oh, mama.
Something will take you,
By your pants, and
Swing you over his head and kick you back and forth.
The metaphor also fits platonic love and selflessness. Part of being selfless is letting go of the things you can’t control. “Love will make you fit it all in the car.”
Watching the bells, watching the lights
What I want is far away
Talk to the moon, flatten her down
Make her watch the wind all night; she can wait.
Guitar Center and a Five-Year-Old Bassist
Winter has received comparisons to Bob Dylan. And in the spirit of Dylan’s mythmaking, there are wild tales surrounding Heavy Metal. He says the album was recorded at multiple Guitar Centers in New York. There’s a moment in “Love Takes Miles” where the music resembles the cacophony of a local Guitar Center. The moment when aspiring musicians converge on several songs all at once. Yet, somehow Winter collects the racket into a gorgeous, imperfect orchestration.
Winter also said a friend arrived with his five-year-old nephew, and the kid ended up recording bass parts on the album. I don’t know how much, if any of this is true, but there’s skillful execution on Heavy Metal, though the overall sentiment and wobbly performances are carefree. And maybe hanging around a kid in awe of a giant bass in his hands gave Heavy Metal moments of lightness amid the anxious parts.
On Geese’s 2023 album, 3D Country, Winter shapeshifts his voice into near-Robert Plant territory. But “Love Takes Miles” finds the singer in a searching way and moving between the baritone philosophy of Nick Cave and the tender falsetto of one not yet succumbing to darkness. The lyrics occasionally feel both improvised and toiled over.
It’s not dissimilar from the looming affection Winter’s singing about on “Love Takes Miles”.
Photo by Douglas Mason/Getty Images
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