River Westin: Saturnine
Self-Released
Out Now
No third album blues for this one time visual artist and graphic designer, currently based in Upstate New York and moving a little to the side of his previous sound, it’s a fresh take on something very British, writes MK Bennett.
Queer pop has a rich and storied history in the culture, dating back to its earliest beginnings. Often closeted torch songs, think Johnny Ray’s Cry or Joe Meek’s sad alien genius with the Tornado’s Telstar, the inherent queerness ( both noun and adjective ) in the music, masked by melodrama, never particularly changed with the evolved acceptance of wider gay culture. In some ways, queerness in pop changed when a more overtly camp sensibility arrived in disco, a shorthand that remains prevalent today. Joyous as that music is, it shortchanges musicians doing something less than obviously arch, a broader art than the stereotype allows. Whether, in 2025, the continued assumption that camp equals queer and vice versa is a homophobic trope, particularly in music, is a pertinent question, but one for a different time. Just ask Rob Halford.
River Westin has reached album number three relatively unscathed, though it’s darker than its two predecessors, Candy Cigarettes and The Honeymoon Suite. Given how the world currently turns, though, that’s hardly surprising. River, who excellently self-describes as a “ vintage boy ‘ opens with Witch Hunting, a haunting and haunted work of wounded brilliance with a Talk Talk/ Blue Nile backing, and the hurt wonder in his voice as he asks questions unanswered is pin sharp. A vibrant and nearly unexpected opener, its modernistic but classic approach comforts you entirely. The lyrics throughout are a mixture of the political and the personal, and the understanding that for some, it’s the same thing. In Witch Hunting, the chorus runs :
They’re out hunting
They’re coming for our kind
Full pursuit
They’re out hunting
They wanna end our line
We refuse
Sweet On Me is initially reminiscent of divorce-era Abba before hitting a more up to date guitar driven chorus, the melody sitting in a dreamlike state, shoegaze adjacent but resolutely pop with proper 80’s drums and swirling keyboards that give way to melancholy strings. Blush is pure slow motion Boys Of Summer, and that much more fabulous for it, a breathy and AOR-tinged mid-paced rocker, all ghosted sighs and half remembered smiles.
Talk To Me is the Cocteau Twins as an ’80s chart act; the backing shines and shimmers in an echoed haze, but the vocal grounds it, a juxtaposition that River uses regularly and cleverly throughout the album, mixed in with many other influences; however, it never becomes obvious or repetitive. It is his sound, essentially, pop-rock voices and tremelo heavy noises. Sunday School is a perfect example of the Gen Z anxiety anthems he coaxes, a manual for the dispossessed to recognize and rally around while the guitars fracture into broken glass and reverb. It is both a postcard from Amerika, and the sound of Postcard Records, Scotland.
Kiss Me Like You Used To, a downbeat song of regret like old school Tears For Fears, big, slow, almost surf-like in its precision, suffocated by knowledge and longing, it’s both sparse and full, the resignation in the words matched by the hesitation in the verses before the chorus resolves itself with something like hope. Invisible is backwards-masked beauty, more Blue Nile rooftop walking, a pinch of Chris Isaak in the music, a chorus of driven desperation as the narrator finds himself alone in a relationship, as the music prickles with fear and paranoia.
Goneboy is a softly picked siren call, like a Flaming Lips ballad, heartfelt but with a potential for the discordant, a plea for leniency on a night when you just have to let go, forgiveness asked but never granted to self, its masterly strings tell a happier story, one where everything works out. Low budget but epic, the wolves circle the fire. Call Off The Hounds uses a hospital visit as a metaphor for resistance, while the music paints a more upbeat but still ghostly presence, the ice-like chords cutting through the echoes, digital in delay and decay. The electronic pulses of the clinical repeat underneath, radar-like..
Lastly, the appropriately titled Faith draws us to the end, a song of hope in dark times, which finishes with :
Found faith in the light you showed me
Found faith in the place you told me
You sold me, no folding
My god I feel I’m home
Found faith in the light you showed me
Found faith in the place you told me
You sold me, no folding
My god I feel I’m home
In the music, there’s a sort of acceptance; the melody runs free, and the progressions resolve, the strings hum along and buzz like telephone lines, the guitars crackle and fizz happily. If there’s a thematic line leading us through here, a conceptual undertow where we are reminded that life and its politic are forever linked to life and its politics, via the difficulty of modern relationships, then so be it. If it’s dreampop as queer signifier, then that’s fine too.
River’s Instagram | Facebook | Website
All words by MK Bennett, you can find his author’s archive here plus his Twitter and Instagram
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