A Collaborative Step Forward for Melbourne’s Psych-Folk Songwrite
Today Winter McQuinn steps up yet again.
His third solo full-length album lands, and with it comes something more ambitious and collaborative, richer even than previous works.
Expect psych-folk and soft rock helped along by a constellation of friends: Dylan Young ( Way Dynamic), Feign Jima, Hot Apple Band, Shelby De Fazio, Acacia Pip, Rudy Polacheck to name but a few.
If you know McQuinn’s earlier albums such as A Rabble of Bees (2021) and Move To The Trees (2024), you’ll recognise the hallmarks: environmental concern, introspective lyricism, a soft-rock/folk tint drawn from 70s templates, a sense of longing mixed with pastoral calm.
Move To The Trees in particular was widely praised for its “sonically sophisticated” textures and its warm tribute to the soft rock folk lineage.
What’s new here is that McQuinn puts the collaborative model front and centre.
He recorded most of Where Are We Now from his home studio in Northcote, Melbourne/Naarm over a couple of years (2023/2024), sketching out instrumentals himself and bringing in vocalists and writers to shape each track’s emotional and melodic weight.
He only sings lead himself on two of the nine tracks.
There’s also more piano than before, which shifts the tonal centre in subtle but important ways: more space, more gravity.
So what should you expect to hear?
Songs rooted in melancholy but refusing to stay there.
Layers of lush instrumentation, vintage influences filtered though McQuinn’s environmental and existential concerns.
Moments of wistfulness (“Summer’s Gone,” “Little Flowers”) alongside tracks that hit with a brighter, more pop-leaning edge (“Always Looking,” “Walkin’ Through That Door”) that still carry emotional weight.
A record that pauses frequently, not just to ask where are we now as a question of place, but of being, belonging and time.
If Move To The Trees felt like looking outward from a solitary garden, Where Are We Now feels like opening the garden gate to explore what lies beyond: more voices, more textures, more shared reflection.
For fans of psych rock, soft rock and songwriters unafraid to stare at both personal and planetary unease, this is a high-water mark.
