‘Right Here, Right Now’ is about being young, restless and overwhelmed, and knowing the clock keeps running either way. Winyah play alternative rock across eleven songs and keep it from settling into habit. The record moves fast, but it also stops to doubt, to look inward, to want things, and now and then to just cut loose. It sounds like a band working it out as they play.
“Ignition” is a short burst that opens into “Spinning,” where the repetition is the point: the song loops the way a stuck routine does, and it never gets melodramatic about it. “Lust” turns up the heat and gets more impulsive. “8 Missed Calls” makes the unanswered phone stand in for distance, avoidance and all the things nobody manages to say.
“Rat Race” pulls back for a wider look. The title promises the usual complaint about modern life, but the band has enough personality that it never becomes a sermon. That’s where the album is strongest, taking everyday experience and tilting it slightly off-center. “Before You Wake” slows down and lets uncertainty sit next to tenderness. “Drawing A Blank” turns further inward, and the title fits: you search for clarity and get quiet.
Five people share songwriting credit (Thomas Rowland, Rob Buffington, Luke Gordon, Stephen Russell and Jake Riley), and it shows. No one voice sets the mood for the whole record, and the songs come at the same messy present from different angles. “I Am Of Course” sounds relaxed and sure of itself, while “Canopy” opens up and drifts, one of the more atmospheric stretches on the album.
“Shades Of Green” changes the mood again. It could be about envy, renewal, a landscape, or all three, and Winyah leave the imagery loose enough that you can decide for yourself. They don’t explain every feeling, and the record is better for it. The closer, “The Breeze,” runs nearly five minutes and is the most patient track, letting its ideas settle. After so much nervous energy, the title suggests release without promising resolution. Sometimes relief is just realizing one moment has ended and another has started.
Matt Zutell recorded, engineered, mixed, and co-produced with the band, and Alex Saltz mastered. The result: songs that each have their own identity but still belong together. ‘Right Here, Right Now’ is about being present without being sure of anything. Winyah get that being fully alive in the moment is thrilling and disorienting at the same time, and their best songs don’t try to separate the two. The feelings sit together, sometimes in a single verse, and that’s where the album gets its pulse.
Learn more links: Cloverdale Records | Bandcamp
