Head North – Winner!
Head North – Buffalo’s favorite cosmic rock act of yesteryear…? Maybe 2025 actually *is* the year of long-awaited reunions? If so, Head North’s resurgence is a harbinger of wonderful things to come.
This band has been through many different forms throughout the years – led by the incomparable Brent Martone and rooted by the strong and inventive drumming of Ben Lieber, Head North has always managed to push the limits of whatever genre they’re inhabiting in that specific moment in time. This time, they’re joined by Eli Ritter on guitar and John Vaughan on bass – the result is their latest offering, Winner!, a wildly inventive and certainly cosmic batch of twelve songs that have as much (or even more) in common with late 90s electronica acts like Moby or Primitive Radio Gods as they do with the emo and pop punk roots where they planted their roots. Gone are the big guitars and throat-shredding outros – in their places are found-audio clips; sounds played in reverse; intangible and inimitable studio magic; and a whole lot of piano. Winner! is clearly a fully-formed vision – a deep dive into its many folds, cracks, and crevices reveal just how much time, care, and nuance went into crafting this LP. For that reason and many more, it’s our album of the week.
The album begins with the 5+ minute “threads,” a constantly simmering exploration of sound, space, and what it truly means to be Head North in 2025. Martone’s distinct vocals and Lieber’s percussive finesse tie the many various elements of this song together – the aforementioned found audio clips; swells of strings; toy glockenspiel; a distant piano played with purpose; the sparingly-plucked guitar; and swells of mostly unidentifiable noise. It all builds into a cryptic and distorted exclamation from Martone – “there used to be a city here.” It intentionally bleeds into song two (and album highlight), “it is easy you can be me,” a welcome throwback to their earlier material. It evokes their previous, bonafide hits like “In The Water” or “Jake’s Apartment” and shows that Head North isn’t afraid to revisit what made fans love them in the first place.
These first two songs show the dichotomy of Winner!; the majority of the album’s songs fall somewhere in between these two. In the latter camp is “evaporated,” another album highlight, that brings to mind Jimmy Eat World (i.e. “Lucky Denver Mint”) with its whirring background noises, self-propelled drumbeat, and upbeat piano melody. “Morning Blood” falls into this category too, with its crunchy guitar riffing and some of the highest energy moments on the album – HN pull the ultimate fake out though (a testament to their skill as songwriters), and just when you think Lieber is going to launch into a cymbal-mashing ending, he builds up into a simple, pulsating bass drum instead. “chosen ones,” has that beautiful, Midwest sentimentality too, elevated by more of those cosmic sonic features that would feel downright otherworldly if utilized by any other group of songwriters.
In the more introspective camp are songs like “Little Kangaroo,” a personal favorite. Essentially a piano ballad, “Kangaroo” is layered thick with field recordings and features a perfect drum accompaniment from Lieber. Just when you’re feeling your most vulnerable, Martone snaps you out of your melancholy daze by singing: “Candy red eyes. Sweet, jesus christ. Are we all going to die?” For more offerings of this ilk, spend some time with the Phantogram-esque “red red blood;” the ultimate vibe-out of “life;” or the 6+ minute you-have-to-experience-this-for-yourself journey of album closer “twelve hrs to tx.”
In the weird, single-oriented music landscape of 2025, Winner! is a rare album that was made to be listened to start-to-finish. Queue this one up on your next long car ride and let it play out like it was meant to be experienced – you’ll have a true appreciation for the love and thought that was poured into this strange and wonderful LP. Winner! is out now (January 31st, 2025). Produced and mixed by Brent Martone and engineered by Jay Zubricky at GCR Audio and at Bigfoot! Studio. Check it out via bandcamp (below) first and foremost, then head over to your preferred streaming service – Spotify or Apple Music.
Categorised in: Album of the Week
This post was written by Nick Sessanna