Feature, News, Reviews

MIRANDA WINTERS (OF MELKBELLY) RELEASES “ALL-PURPOSE” OUT NOW VIA EXPLODING IN SOUND RECORDS

October 6, 2020
photo credit Lenny Gilmore

MIRANDA WINTERS (OF MELKBELLY) RELEASES “ALL-PURPOSE” OUT NOW VIA EXPLODING IN SOUND RECORDS

Miranda Winters is best known as the guitarist and vocalist for Chicago’s Melkbelly, a band acclaimed for both their thunderous noise and bright melodies. While they released a new record earlier this year (PITH via Wax Nine/Carpark Records), Winters has always been a prolific songwriter, and she returns with a new solo release, All-Purpose. The two song single, was released October 2nd on Exploding In Sound Records, was recorded back in March, just before the pandemic broke loose.

Continuing along the path of 2018’s Xobeci, What Grows Here? (Sooper Records), Winters’ solo work focuses on her visionary songwriting. The songs are stripped back and minimal, but lush and gorgeous. On All-Purpose, Winters explores personal experience, from the birth of her first child to reflections on death, and the profundity of both. Her sweet voice and warm guitars lay the framework for two intimate songs, veiled in abstract lyrics that unpack together with the airy compositions.

While “Double Mirror Light” explores a “moment of bliss and wonder, that shocks you with its magnitude and may only happen once in your life,” Winters shares it is about “when my baby was first dropped onto my chest. This was a moment so stunning that it initially blinded me.” For the b-side however, “Little Baby Dead Bird” was “written as a plea to two different people who, at the time, existed on either side of our realm. The before life side and the after life side.”

1. Double Mirror Light
2. Little Baby Dead Bird

Double Mirror Light is such a deeply emotional track. Just over 3 minutes of an intimate and honest exploration where you can feel the resounding sincerity resonating in each string being hit, within the marching riffs and found in each lyric delicately captured on this record.

Little Baby Dead Bird flows with the biting bassline at the centre of this track, Winters joins the atmospherical aura with the gentle tones, before the track bursts through quiet sombre moments to more intense highs. A riveting motion from start to finish, this track tackles the best textures and provides a gloomy yet ardent orchestration.

Recorded together with Dave Vettraino (The Hecks, Ohmme, Dehd) in Chicago, Winters is joined by peers of Chicago’s incredible DIY community including both Lillie West (Lala Lala), and Nic Gohl (Deeper) on backing vocals as well as Joe Starita (Hunt Hunt Hunt Camp) on cello and violin, adding sweeping strings and gorgeous nuance.

https://mwinters.bandcamp.com/

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