Kip Winger - Songs from the Ocean Floor



1. Cross (4:51) 2. Crash the Wall (3:32) 3. Sure Was a Wildflower (4:53) 4. Two Lovers Stand (4:22) 5. Landslide (5:15) 6. Faster (2:50) 7. Song of Midnight (4:49) 8. Free (3:47) 9. Only One Word (5:10) 10. Broken Open (5:40) 11. Resurrection (5:16) 12. Everything You Need (4:15)

Total Running Time: 54:41

Please do stop the snickering, hysterical laughter, deriding contempt, or whatever chiding weapon of your preference you are currently employing. Yes, Kip Winger was once the man mostly responsible for the cliché-ridden pop metal of Winger's first two albums, the man whose pinup was once used as a dartboard by Lars Ulrich of Metallica, and the man who lost the attention of all mass media as soon as the grunge explosion took over. However, he is also the man that decided to study at Juilliard, continue to write music, and change the latter into something entirely different from that of his commercial halcyon days. In other words, there is no way in hell that Beavis and Butthead's Stewart would be wearing a Winger t-shirt nowadays.

Instead, the apparel would more likely end up adorning the body of someone with a taste for more moody sounds, more profound treading ground, and an approach much less pumped on flash octane and much more concentrated on steady mid-tempo development. In fact, all traces of Winger are gone here and instead replaced by an often sensitive mix of quite well crafted and effective modern pop and rock songs with a sometimes progressive edge and a bunch of hackneyed and ultra-boring ballads. Alright, so not all traces of Winger are gone exactly, but Songs from the Ocean Floor is a far cry from the music of that band nevertheless.

And despite the mellifluous botches appearing here and there, but mostly in the form of a quite awful "Two Lovers Stand," some of Kip Winger's material on this solo offering is impressively excellent. Not only that the album starts off with the dramatically strong "Cross" or sets the streets of Hong Kong aflame with the reserved neon light hard rock of "Faster," but also that there is a slightly manic and dark jewel in the industrial overtones and stark pop shades of "Sure Was a Wildflower," the album's pièce de résistance without a doubt. Then it's off to more reflections of Winger's newly acquired serene and introspective nature, some working quite well, some not quite so well.

And the balance could have perhaps come out more in the favor of the record's bright moments were Songs from the Ocean Floor a little less uniform in its mid-tempo moodiness, which after fifty-four minutes does get to be a bit tiresome. Still, the aftertaste is a good one, and proves that Kip Winger has matured enormously as both musician and composer since all the way back to his formative days with his macabre excellence Alice Cooper. And if anything, he deserves to be commended for the growth and recommended for the enormous potential that some of his ideas have. Good work Kip.

-by Marcelo Silveyra

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