WINSPEAR Adult Romantix [VINYL]

A fixture in LA’s music scene for over a decade, singer and songwriter Samira Winter found a home in the city’s DIY rock community, carving out her own niche of gloriously detailed and eclectic dream pop under the name Winter. Her newest record and Winspear debut, Adult Romantix, is a farewell love letter to LA—“a tunnel of summers and memories”—inspired by Mary Shelley’s gothic-romantic literature and ’90s rom-coms. After growing up in Curitiba, Brazil and playing in her first bands in Boston, she relocated to Los Angeles in 2013 and fell in love with the city. But at a certain point, Samira was craving a change of scenery to facilitate self-growth, a painful, but necessary realization that brought about a move to New York City. Leading up to her emotional coast-to-coast move, she spent roughly two years writing songs in a transitory state: often in between tours, in different cities, and in various sublets. The resulting 13 tracks became her new LP, Adult Romantix— the follow-up to 2022’s landmark What Kind of Blue Are You? Nostalgic and wistful, the album blends swirling guitars, cigarette-glazed vocals and a few notable guest collaborators, like Horse Jumper of Love’s Dimitri Giannopoulos and Hannah van Loon of Tanukichan. Influenced by touchstones like Sonic Youth’s Rather Ripped, Elliott Smith’s Either/ Or and 2010s sunkissed California shoegaze, Adult Romantix vacillates between dewy, strummy ecstasy and moody, nighttime desire. Marked by swirling, drive-pedal squalls and open-tuned acoustic guitar, there’s a palpable bittersweetness to these raw, lovesick tunes.