On the morning of Sept. 26th, I was awoken with a birthday present like no other. It wasn’t a physical item but rather a piece of music. My favorite new band, Geese, dropped an absolute heater of an album that I would be blasting for the rest of the year.
Their 2023 album “3D Country” was an immediate favorite for me, because it had everything I had always wanted in music. The album was energetic, meaningful, and just overall a weird cosmic trip. Geese’s wackiness alone is enough to convince me they are the tightest band out of the New York right now. It is easily my favorite album in recent times.
Their newest album, “Getting Killed,” shares some musical similarities with their last, but besides a few songs, it’s pretty different. Geese’s front-man, Cameron Winter, released an album last year that grasped a huge flock of fans, which is awesome because out of every band out right now, Geese deserves the spotlight the most.
The album opens with the noisy yet serene sounds of Cameron Winter, bellowing the alarming lyrics: “There’s a bomb in my car,” and “My wife’s in my shed,” on “Trinidad.” This is easily the hardest song the band has put out yet, their uniqueness shining through completely.
This then flows into “Cobra,” starting out with a happier, techno sounding drum beat, furthermore merging into the jolly sounds of Cameron Winter’s keys, over-top the thumping sounds of Dominic DiGesu’s bass, getting louder and louder as the song progresses. The song uses a cobra and the process of a snake charming to highlight the love that is being enticed by one partner to another.
Next up is “Husbands,” which has an echo in the background, sounding like a combination of tribal sounds and feedback fuzz. This song is definitely odd, but does everything it needs to. It’s a cleanser from the noise of the past tracks. Winter then sings, “There’s a horse on my back,” which shows that he lives life with burdens, but those very same burdens help cure his loneliness. The song eventually reaches a decently loud crescendo, until it completely slows down with around eighteen seconds left. As the song quickly fades away, we are brought right back into the heavier sounding Geese.
The title track, “Getting Killed,” goes right into it, taking us right into a riff that feels like Rage Against the Machine, Geese, and a Ukrainian choir, merged together to make the victorious tune. Winter’s choppy vocals that cry over top of the monstrous rhythm, invokes a tone of being overwhelmed over the formalities of everyday life. Cameron Winter continuously sings “I’m getting killed by a pretty good life,” showing that despite all of the privileges he has in life, he is still taxed daily by the constant anxieties that can occur in the modern world.
“Islands of Men” is the next tune, which is one of the three songs the band released as singles. It kicks off with the sounds of a wood block, gradually getting louder, with the addicting, yet simple sounds of Emily Green’s guitar. The drums then kick in after Winter lays down some verses. He sings, “Lazy eyed, you look weak. You have seen islands of men,” which hints towards the idea of transition. Guitarist, Emily Green, transitioned about a year ago, and “Islands of Men,” seems to be about how tough that was for her at first. Later in the song, as it gets loud and wild, Winter repeats the lyrics of “Man is an island, man is an island,” highlighting the insecurities someone transitioning may feel. It describes the thought of the transition as an island, and how daunting the whole idea felt. The outside world being everyone around the island. This may be my favorite song on the album, not only because of the incredible songwriting but also because of the artistic production it brings to the table.
“100 Horses,” chimes in with a gnarly bass line, eventually merging with the genius that is Cameron Winter. The track was also released as a single, and it couldn’t have been more Geese coded. This is the closest song on “Getting Killed,” to have the same feeling as their last album, “3D Country.” It’s slow, it’s quiet, it’s loud, it’s fast, it’s Geese. The tune gives off the theme of war, and how people react to those sort of occurrences, using the horses as a weird, but interesting character to show not everyone copes the same. Some cope by dancing and parading, whereas some cope with the idea of the silent, furthermore proving that Winter is the best songwriter out there right now.
This then finds its way into church as the sounds of the next track, “Half Real,” play overhead. The tune starts with a happier sounding chime, which automatically puts me in the headspace of a churchgoer on Sunday morning. I can picture myself, sitting in a pew after a long weekend, as Geese start to save the boredom that is church. The perfectly on beat drums of Max Bassin then chip in as Winter’s voice lingers above. The song covers the idea of a lover (most likely Winter) as he has to deal with past relationships that didn’t go so well, even though they were destined to, and had a partial connection. The line, “He may say that our love was only half real,” shows that the love and connection among Winter and the significant other was there, but it never ended up panning out, which we can see affects Winter deeply, even to the point of him wanting a lobotomy to erase all of the unfortunate memories of his past.
As the song swallows itself to silence, “Au Pays du Cocaine,” then lingers in, slowly. It opens with a prolific singer haunting the back of the track as a high-pitched, but calming, guitar sound from Green takes control. The song is simple, yet packed with an abundance of emotion that fits Geese’s aura, and only theirs. The lyrics are complex, which makes it a bit hard to interpret, but it appears as though Winter is speaking about addiction to some extent. The idea of a loved one, who has been distant, due to their addiction, who is getting called on by their old or even current partner, saying that they can change their life, and a positive life isn’t as distant as they might feel, seems to be a possible explanation. These lyrics are super challenging, which makes total sense, as it’s coming from Winter, who continues to impress me. He’s already surpassed some of music’s greatest, and he still has a whole career ahead of him to pass some more.
“Bow Down,” is next up. The intro’s fast paced drums feel like something only Danger Mouse would produce, sounding quite similar to his collaboration album with Black Thought. The repetitive sounds on this track evoke a tone of importance as Winter pipes out his typical voice of victorious despair.
This then goes into the album’s most popular song, for all the right reasons, “Taxes.” When this song was first released as an early single, the band’s popularity was decently sized, but since its release, it has only grown larger. A good way to sum this up is that when they first announced a tour for the album, tickets were only twenty-five but looking at them now, it’s up to three-hundred. The track covers the idea of a character who is tortured by his guilt, then closes off the world around them because of it. It’s a bit tricky to decipher whether or not the character is trying to improve themselves, but that seems like the consensus.
This then brings us to “Long Island City Here I Come,” which I’ll admit didn’t catch my ear at first, but has since blossomed into one of my all time favorites. The tune starts with a unique drum beat, paying homage to the vintage New York style that emerged before them. This, by far, is the most complex song on the record. It highlights multiple different storylines in so few words, proving Winter’s talent further.
“Getting Killed,” is a revolutionary album, mainly because no one has been able to do what Geese has done, providing heavy lyrics, over melodies of all sorts, that all have meaning. Fly with the flock while you still can, they’re out of this world.
