PURCHASE LPS THROUGH WORRIED SONGS: worriedsongs.bandcamp.com/album/the-time-to-come

‘The Time To Come’ is the first release from Worried Songs and the striking debut from twenty-one-year-old, Texan (now residing in Chicago), Eli Winter, noted as one of the Guardian’s ‘artists to watch in 2020’.

These masterfully composed instrumental pieces for six-string, twelve-string, and electric solo guitar showcase the raw talent of this young guitar powerhouse.

In ‘The Time To Come’, Winter remembers the dead, considers the dynamic nature of memory, and attempts to chronicle the nearly inexpressible difficulty of processing loss. Winter began recording sessions in Houston immediately after Hurricane Harvey, and this album's turbulent emotional landscape is in some ways a response to the devastation of the storm.

The record revolves around its title track, a meditation on the passing of a close friend. In the days after her death, Winter wrote a long piece for guitar in which every part would feel essential. “I wanted to conjure her through the music,” Winter says. "This song is the closest thing I have to a memory of her.” He calls it aspirational: “How can you maintain hope in the face of grief?”

The Time To Come is rich, warm and evocative, marking an ambitious debut from a young guitarist.

Originally released on a tiny-run of now long-gone cassette tapes, ‘The Time to Come’ finally sees the light of day on vinyl, housed in the bucolic American folk art of Albert Gray.

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Here's what Eli has to say about it:

Listening back to my first record, I’m struck by the uncertainty of the playing, its speed, its brittleness. That music came at times during which I found it easy to play in the shadow of people I’ve loved, whether knowing them or their music, and easy to show them this, to the point that I worried I was offending them when all I wanted was to express my gratitude. As I prepared music for the initial sessions, then, summering in Houston—and “sessions” is generous; most of the time I was recording on the second floor of Cameron Knowler’s loft—I remember wanting to make sure that all the music would be decidedly my own, and I remember feeling excited to have written what I thought would become a guitar record without any clear compositional connection to place. Such a connection was, I thought, an obvious trope of guitar records, and one that mine would be wiser to avoid.

Then Hurricane Harvey came, and it became clear that to avoid dealing with it in the music would mean losing a chance to cope: to translate something of what it felt like to be safe, dry and guilty, struggling to imagine a way forward from the wreckage yet trying all the same. At the time, putting such a feeling into words felt raw at best, at worst ineffable, but in music it felt refined and evocative of what I couldn’t say or write. At once it offered a loose conceptual framework and an excuse to break a rule. Ultimately many of these songs had direct referents: a moment, a person, a feeling, a point at which, having sensed a performance had moved in a different direction than I had anticipated, I sensed—as did my partners in recording—that the most constructive thing to do would be to follow that impulse to its end.

I was surprised when Chaz offered to release The Time To Come on vinyl. The music of Joseph Allred and Matthew J. Rolin is bold, distinctive, and its makers are simultaneously kind and no-bullshit. It’s an honor to share this release with them, and with friends old and new.


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“His debut album is really sublime” — Laura Snapes, The Guardian

“Eli Winter is one of the brightest new lights in the world of guitar music today.” —Record Crates United

“Eli Winter’s The Time To Come is a remarkably assured debut….Every moment is earned, every note rings out with warmth and wonder. Beautiful stuff.” — Tyler Wilcox, Aquarium Drunkard