Good Guess, the new album from pianist and singer-songwriter Winston C.W., is streaming exclusively at The Fader today ahead of its release on Friday (Dec. 4) via Ruination Record Co. and Whatever's Clever. The Fader calls it a "soft rock mini-masterpiece." Listen to Good Guess below.
The Brooklyn-based artist, known formally as Winston Cook-Wilson, the lead singer of
Office Culture, performed and recorded Good Guess live in the studio, with no overdubs, over the course of 2 days. The album features members of the Brooklyn experimental trio
Scree -- Carmen Rothwell on upright bass and Ryan Beckley on electric guitar -- and the record was engineered by Cook-Wilson's Whatever's Clever labelmates and close friends Nico Hedley and Ian Wayne. Wayne also mixed the album.
In Cook-Wilson's words: "The songs on the album are about trying to stay in the moment while feeling like you're being held hostage by the past. The spirit of the music itself, too-the group improvisation and egalitarianism of this trio with Ryan and Carmen-is all about staying in the present. It's about listening to each other and playing things differently every time while sticking to defined bigger ideas that move us.
The songs were written during a time when I was thinking a lot about inexorability, self-denial, and the idea of "holding it together" as a person. Some moments reflect the alienation I was experiencing within the context of a relationship while dealing with feelings I was processing from past ones. Others touch on complicated dynamics with other friends and even people in my professional life."
Last month, Cook-Wilson released a
video for the melancholic, jazz-inflected second single "Business," after it premiered on
Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard. "Business" followed the release of the sprawling, 8-minute long title track,
"Good Guess," which Cook-Wilson describes as a thesis statement for the album.
Listen to "Good Guess" here:
Photo Credit: Max Heimberger
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