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VICE Album Reviews, October 9: Cameron Winter, Troye Sivan, Pitbull, and More

Dropping a piano from a great height onto this week’s new releases, including records from HAAi and The Fall.

By Adam Christopher Smith

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Music journalism is going to the wall, and places for sensible, well-informed, nuanced takes on the latest releases are dwindling. So we thought we might as well put the final nail in the coffin

Read last week’s album reviews here.

Cameron WinterLive at Carnegie HallPartisan Records / Play It Again SamThis stark live album captures Cameron Winter at the height of a hype cycle so rabid even sensible music publications ripped up their calendars to name his 2024 solo record one of the best things to come out in 2025. This affront to sequential time was typical of the collective hysteria, which reached a crescendo when, at 23, the Geese frontman became one of the youngest solo artists to headline Carnegie Hall’s main auditorium. 

This set was recorded about a year after the release of Heavy Metal, yet when I first stuck it on, I was convinced it consisted entirely of non-album deep cuts, as Cameron reimagines the record throughout (also playing three unreleased compositions). No matter how far music technology has come, there are still few things more affronting than one man really going for it at the piano—just ask John Cale. At times, these songs are oldhead unlistenable, which you don’t hear too often........

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