Adult Romantix by Winter

In some ways, a goodbye is the purest, most meaningful form of expression. Whether a misty-eyed hug or an offhand text message, it reaffirms your connection to someone and brings finality to an interaction. It’s also a beautifully ephemeral, yet inherently heavy gesture—a wistful “until next time” that traps a moment in amber, and all but ensures your next meeting will be shaped by different feelings and circumstances. Goodbyes are hard—treacherous, even—and Samira Winter is no stranger to their intoxicating bittersweetness.

The singer-songwriter and guitarist has been a mainstay in Los Angeles’ music scene for over a decade, carving out her own niche of gloriously detailed and eclectic dream pop under the name Winter. 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. She found a sense of belonging in its DIY rock community—the basement of her longtime Echo Park home was host to countless shows and even Winter’s first practices—and she grew attached to L.A.’s cosmic, inspiring aura. 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—her Winspear debut, the follow-up to 2022’s landmark What Kind of Blue Are You?, and a goodbye love letter to her time in L.A.

What Kind of Blue Are You? was, in her words, “a total reset”—a dark, healing, and intensely personal record that cemented Winter’s unique musical language. As Samira began to confront the end of her decade-plus in L.A., she was overcome by waves of memories and nostalgia, which stirred feelings of pure-hearted reverence for her 20s—catching shows at The Echo, driving through Southern California, and soaking in the blistering sun for so long that you start to feel existential and an impending sense of doom. So, instead of exorcising inner demons, this time around, Samira visited the ghosts of heartfelt memories, which had spilled into her present reality. She describes Adult Romantix as “a tunnel of summers and memories,” inspired by romantic-period texts like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as well as ‘90s rom-coms—indulging in heady melodrama and romantic and platonic longing, while also embracing a lighthearted, youthful innocence.

To go along with these meditations, Samira channeled a textured, yearning indie rock sound that squared with her vision of “a lost L.A. summer”—a departure from the electronic experimentation of her 2024 EP …and she’s still listening, penned around the same time. While What Kind of Blue Are You? was inspired by ‘90s dream pop classics, Adult Romantix was influenced by touchstones like Sonic Youth’s Rather Ripped, the forlorn acoustic rock of Elliott Smith, the slippery electronic-rock of Dean Blunt, and California shoegaze à la Further and Starflyer 59. Marked by swirling, drive-pedal squalls and open-tuned acoustic guitar, there’s a palpable bittersweetness to these raw, lovesick tunes. Blurred daydreams and a sense of brooding introspection pervade the record—from dizzying tape echo and icy breakbeats to Samira’s androgynous, pitched-down, cigarette-glazed vocals. Vacillating between dewy, strummy ecstasy and moody, nighttime desire, Adult Romantix thrives on escapism, always delightfully in the clouds and often sonically peculiar.

Following a delicate, jangly intro, the album’s motor kicks into full gear with “Just Like a Flower,” which merges Sarah Records sweetness with an all-out, whammy-heavy, Dinosaur Jr.-esque attack. But the first track Samira wrote for the record was actually “In My Basement Room,” a lush, garbled ode to her beloved, aforementioned basement, and the product of a songwriting course with Phil Elverum (The Microphones, Mount Eerie). The whispery, acoustic “Misery,” which features vocals and lyrics from Horse Jumper of Love’s Dimitri Giannopoulos, is also inextricably linked to a physical place. In a flash of kismet, Samira sublet a room in Bedstuy, where she wrote several songs on Adult Romantix, only to later work on this track with Dimitri, who happened to be subletting that exact bedroom. The smoldering, shoegaze-y “Hide-a-Lullaby” features another guest vocalist, former tourmate Hannah van Loon of Tanukichan, who trades hushed lines with Samira, while the ambient, Grouper-like “Running” contains washed-out guitar and vocals from Samuel Acchione (Alex G). And broadening the record’s scope, the sparkly, percussive “Without You,” and the hypnagogic, 800 Cherries-inspired “Candy #9” incorporate Portuguese verses, a nod to Samira’s Brazilian roots.

Lyrically, Adult Romantix is a fascinating contrast between the high emotional stakes and divine romance of gothic literature, and the happy-go-lucky twee of indie-pop bands of yore. Couched near the unbothered bliss of lines like “Drunk and stoned / In my bed / Listening to ‘Fuck and Run’ / Since I was 12” (“Just Like A Flower”) are bold, impassioned declarations like “Love’s never gonna die” (“The Beach”). But for anyone who’s been through young adulthood, this push and pull won’t register as a contradiction, but rather a viscerally familiar encapsulation of the simultaneous bleeding-heart intensity and simpler nonchalance of one’s salad days. The real tension at the heart of the record is Samira’s attempt to reckon with the trappings of nostalgia. How does one engage with the transportive beauty of memories, while skirting the unhealthy urge to neglect your current reality and brood over alternate paths your life could have taken? For Samira, the answer isn’t so simple, but ultimately, Adult Romantix was a way to keep formative memories alive, and maybe not close a chapter, but put a pin in it.

Saying goodbye to a place can be gut-wrenching. Various sights and haunts become sentient beings in our lives, coloring every aspect of our memories. Adult Romantix allowed Samira to conjure the “scent memories” of her 20s and begin to parse the refreshed outlook on her 30s—it’s less about literal people, places, or events, and more about lingering sensations. It’s a record of unadulterated romance, regretful self-sabotage, and deep contemplation, with the sobering end of summertime looming like a specter. In the second verse of “Hide-a-Lullaby,” Samira coos, “Write it down with tears, lick your lips so bitter in sweetness, send to the angels above.” It’s in this spirit of divine melodrama, love, and sorrow that the album was born——as well as reverence for a magical city that knows a thing or two about angels.

Adult Romantix out now

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