Cameron Winter
Sydney Opera House, Sydney, NSW
Monday, February 16th
The debut Sydney solo show for New York City singer-songwriter Cameron Winter couldn’t be in starker contrast to the gig played by his heralded indie-rock quartet Geese five days earlier at the Metro Theatre. Whereas that live-wire performance was held in a packed, sweat-soaked room turned combustion furnace, tonight sees Winter alone with nothing more than a piano and a microphone at one of the world’s most stately performing arts spaces.
The sold-out crowd may be seated in a more civil and better air-conditioned environment than the Metro, but they are equally rabid and reverent toward Winter minus his Geese bandmates. It’s not an unexpected outcome – before Geese-mania kicked off in earnest last year, Winter’s 2024 debut solo album Heavy Metal became a favourite with critics, firing up the hype machine that went into overdrive once Geese’s excellent Getting Killed LP arrived in September 2025.
In stripped-back mode, one thing becomes immediately apparent: Winter’s voice, which impresses but can occasionally grate on record, sounds noticeably better live, even if at times it hews a little too closely to Thom Yorke’s vocal stylings. It’s a powerful enough instrument to command the Opera House crowd into can-hear-a-pin-drop silence, even when singing brand new songs that are largely unfamiliar.
While the setlist pulls mostly from Heavy Metal, three new songs are performed, their quality strong enough to enrapture the crowd and suggest Winter’s winning streak is in no danger of stopping any time soon. Opener “It All Fell in the River” manages to sound like a beloved favourite despite its freshness, and the compelling “Emperor XIII in Shades” sees Winter get some laughs from the black humour in the lyrics (“It’s too bad what happened to Jesus / Thank god our Friday evening survived”).
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Credit: Ravyna Jassani / Sydney Opera House
That humour also makes a showing during one of the only moments of stage banter, when Winter addresses a punter’s loud, obnoxious gibberish with a sharply delivered “Sorry, I don’t speak Australian.”
The tracks from Heavy Metal are equally captivating. A hushed “Try As I May” induces chills; “Love Takes Miles” sounds just as lovely minus the extra flourishes on the recorded version; and “Drinking Age” is borderline hypnotic, with Winter even managing to make non-sequitur lyrics like “Wallet on the ground / Bag of rubber bands” sound utterly captivating.
Although he mostly hunches over the piano with hair covering his face and never directly faces the crowd as per the Geese show, there’s a greater sense of emotional connection being conjured here. During a jaw-dropping moment in “$0”, the audience becomes completely illuminated at the precise moment Winter sings “God is real / I’m not kidding this time” — words that sound a little tongue in cheek on record, but sublime and transcendent when delivered in this particular context.
It’s incredible to think that Winter is producing this high calibre of work, both on his own and with Geese, at just 23 years of age. This brilliant performance, which earns Winter an enthusiastic standing ovation, gives the overwhelming impression that there are even better things to come from a songwriter who is proving himself to be one of his generation’s finest.
