'80s band Winger returns with new but familiar sound

The band's latest effort is 'IV.'
By JOHN BENSON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
Sophisticated. Progressive. Winger?
That's right, Winger, the late '80s/early '90s rock band that enjoyed success toward the end of the hair metal age with hit singles "Seventeen," "Headed for a Heartbreak" and "Miles Away," has been misunderstood. Or at least that's the claim by its namesake Kip Winger.
"It's very challenging music to listen to unless you're somebody who really hasn't heard our records and only heard the singles," said Winger, during a phone call from a tour stop in Long Island, N.Y. "If you judge us on the lyrics of 'Seventeen,' then you won't understand what I'm talking about but if you actually listen to the music, you'll see what was happening and the extreme musicianship in the classic rock genre."
He added, "I never understood any of the glam or hair band thing. We just got lumped into the Poison element, which was actually as far away as we could have been. But that's fine because we had a great ride and no regrets. It was really an MTV thing when Beavis and Butthead decided we were the band at the scene of the crime of the '80s. That music was very saturated at that time, so it's very understandable that when 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' came along, it was all going to go away."
Solo career
And away it went; however, the singer-bassist was already thinking about a solo career, which didn't come to fruition until the late '90s. His solo albums ranged from hard rock sounds to art pop digressions. But by then, the grunge wave had crested with many of the MIA '80s bands returning, including offers for Winger the band to tour.
A few years ago, Winger hit the road with Poison and Cinderella like it was 1989 all over again but the songwriter wasn't about to rest on the band's laurels. The result is its latest effort "IV," which takes the outfit in a new yet somewhat familiar direction.
"It's a lot more progressive," Winger said. "From my point of view, it's very representative of the band over the whole career. But it's got kind of a pop element point of view in that the songs are structured like pop songs. It's very similar to the first album only from a musical point of view, only there's a lot more sophisticated modalities going on in it."
Coming to Cleveland
Die-hard fans interested in witnessing the sophisticated modalities live will have a chance to see Winger tonight at the House of Blues. The band is expected to play all of its hits, a few tracks from "IV" and obscure songs "Rainbow in the Rose" and "You are the Saint, I am the Sinner."
"There are two perceptions of us out there," Winger said. "Winger the band and myself the solo artist as kind of like a cultish underground kind of music for people who know what's really going on. And we're like a pop kind of retro band for people who don't know what's going on but want to lump us into the glam rock thing. Those are the people who don't really understand what the band was."