Weād thought weād heard everything that love can do: Lift me higher and higher. Make me feel brand new. Make my dreams come true. And then āLove Takes Milesā stumbled half-drunk up to the microphone and poured its little heart out. Cameron Winter, the rookie of the year, made a solo debut that sounds like heās a hundred years in.
You can tell from the way those first notes come out that the bruise is still fresh, but āLove Takes Milesā is like a man holding a fistful of lottery tickets: It makes you sick the way his hopes shoot up to the moon and land back in the dust. Maybe heāll find love on the side of the road, with the blues syncopation and the juke joint piano ringing like a payphone on an empty highway. Whoās that calling? Sometimes I imagine the people in the song are just absent friends and sometimes theyāre lovers with their whole lives ahead of them. Love will find you anywhere, which is what makes this one for the ages. Get a grip, youāre telling me, Who says āa-walkināā unless theyāre trying to sound like Bob Dylan on purpose? Of course he is. Lend your shoe to the young wunderkind, coming all this way on foot. Love will take you miles away, drop you off someplace you donāt recognize yourself, and years later still feel like the first time.