Premiere: Opus Vitae, ‘The Fall’

Kevin Bronson on September 19th, 2018

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“It was a crazy fucking year,” songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Banah Winn says, explaining the evolution of his new album as Opus Vitae, “Gramercy.” Over 14 songs, the Portland, Ore., native and former keyboardist in Cayucas recounts the tribulations of a 12-month stretch that included, he says, dealing with an unhinged person to whom he was beholden, embracing sex as a way to avoid the pain of life, suffering melancholic nostalgia for a broken childhood, falling in love while being completely heartbroken at the same time, feeling anger towards men felt from a female perspective and experiencing wake-up-we’re-destroying-the-planet moment. Yes, that’s a lot, but as Opus Vitae’s 2015 EP showed, his music is up to the task.

The first in a series of singles Winn will release is “The Fall,” an expansive indie-rocker with guitar licks that feel like balled-up fists ready to unleash fury on some inanimate object. “You’re insane / but I want to get along,” he pleads, the riffs circling.

“I found myself in [a situation] where I was dealing with an individual who was unstable, unpredictable, volatile and had power over me and my life,” Winn says. “It was more or less was a time where I was trying to rationalize this person’s behavior while slowly realizing it wasn’t really grounded in objective reality, all while trying to defuse it ASAP. So instead of aggressively and directly sticking up for myself (which would have probably made things even more volatile) I found myself channeling my inner anger and my own need [for an] antidote to my powerless position into this song. … I wanted to help this person, but self-preservation sometimes has to trounce empathy.”

“Gramercy” was a true solo project; Winn played all the instruments and self-produced, with Darrell Thorp (Radiohead, Foo Fighters, among many others), who produced the 2015 EP, providing the mix.

“When I was making the record, I wanted both to have each song about a theme or event that had happened to me that year … so that it could be re-felt, re-experienced,” Winn says. “With this song, it was that feeling of irritation, of being pushed to the edge, of the want and the need to break out of one’s shell, to stop running, and eventually show my own assertiveness.”

||| Stream: “The Fall”