Great idea, the second album of original songs from Brooklyn singer – songwriter Winston CW, explores the mixed landscape of human memory, exploring hills and valleys in an area that feels familiar and foreign. A song could arrive through a rose-tinted glass, or as a self-critical reflection that casts the past in one version. But whatever the first idea, it’s a way for a more interesting understanding, shedding light on the complexity of previously platonic and romantic relationships – though, before all say and sing anything, even these decisions feel debated.
This fair analysis is an old analysis for Cook-Wilson, who, as the New York sophisti-pop Fourth Office Culture Opponent, detailed the highs and lows of the city that live on 2019’s Life of Crime, a table full of characters finding joy and disappointment in equal measure in bars and backrooms. (Full disclosure: Cook-Wilson also contributes to Pitchfork from time to time.) Great idea localization of the drama, applying Cook-Wilson’s hyper-analytical analysis to the mind’s eye. With the vision that comes from months spent indoors, a previous life comes to a halt, allowing for a more unbiased assessment of a time not so long ago that already feels distant. .
Even with a clearer understanding of the past, doubt lies a little beyond the frame. Uncertainty reaches a gray phase with each vignette, affecting every turn of phrase and chord progression. He delves into the main monologue of the album, making for a songwriting that is rarely authoritative and well aware of its limitations, but doing his best to explain things as they were. As Cook-Wilson sings on “Safety,” “That guilt will find you, no matter where you are in the summer / No matter how long you hang your head.”
Contrary to Cook-Wilson’s march of acoustic piano chords, Carmen Rothwell’s straightforward bass and Ryan Beckley’s smoky electric guitar pick up the deceptive, automatic verses of “Safety” and “Broken Drum.” Gradually, however, the players move toward harmonic union, and tight, disagreeable concerts eventually enter moments of warm melody. At the same time, Cook-Wilson’s songwriting grows strong and resilient, emerging from contemplation with a new wisdom of personal failures, whether or not it is a sense of the repetitive nature of life (“Broken Drum ”) or in recognition of how deep the present can be seen in the past (“ Safety ”).
Beyond being a backdrop for Great idea ‘ ambiguous statement, this instrument drives the most self-assured moments forward. The opening instrument of “Cakewalk” opens with a sense of movement, his memories of the time spent with an ex-flame shifting to a full-fledged display of the whole relationship as a one-man piano. a crooked person giving way to the full ensemble. Similarly, on “Birds,” the lightest tune on the album, Cook-Wilson uses melodic vamps in memory of Randy Newman to ridicule himself for his own self-accelerating ideas. It’s a joy of happiness on a record that’s otherwise bad and systematic is an approach to memory.
Experimental segues abound Great idea, but sometimes they feel lonely and nebulous. The “Swing Time” instrument and the incomparably different instruments come off as a disgrace, reducing the movement built over the first four tracks. The twisted lyricism and face-to-face transition from harmony to dirge-like march on “No Regrets” is equally contrarian, breaking from the record’s usual warm interplay. But according to the record penchant for scrutiny, these rooms are short-lived, as are the memories they make.
Rosebud is not in sight before Cook-Wilson comes to the titular conclusion of the record, with no final control as the mental evidence begins to bore. “I look at your picture, spouting until it cracks / The arrows start to rust and I’m thin again,” he crouches, surrounded by evocative pianos and an abstract electric guitar, his vocals wear out as the record reaches its peak before it quickly descends to the reach of wet, silent pianos as its he began. Nonetheless, it offers some closure; although the past is still unknown, Great idea illuminates the recess of the psyche. There is no real truth to be found back there, but in the end, you have to turn around and come out.
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