geese_getting_killed

Geese has taken the helm of the indie rock mothership. I became aware of them around the same time most people did, I guess, when they dropped their 2023 album 3D Country. Cameron Winter's shape-shifting voice convulsing on top of the expressive rock tracks made it impossible to hear and ignore.

This new album Getting Killed picks up right where they left off (despite the departure of their guitarist Hudson leaving the band).

Their single Trinidad kicks off the album with an aggressive, rage-filled explosion, an attempt to rip free from the wrappings of modern life. Departing that song, we catch our breath and enter the flow that we are familiar with for the rest of the album. Husbands is a rhythmic, probing question. Winter sings this alone with himself - accompanied by a harmonizing chorus of his own parallel selves.

We find ourselves again submerged and suffocating in the new world in Getting Killed. A percussive ticking clock sets the tone alongside some strings that have no interest in being restrained.

I'm getting killed by a pretty good life

It seems like he crystalizes his entire message in this single line. He is a gumball in the machine, crushed and suffocated by other colorful gumballs, unable to differentiate who he is or recognize the significance of his own humanity. You can't say from the outside that a gumball or a gumball machine isn't pretty good, though.

100 Horses presents an interesting juxtaposition: late 60s psychedelic rock and funk riffs marching forward while Winter sings in an almost gregorian chant or a hymn-like spell. He drones of wartime commands to sing and dance and smile. It evokes the great Vietnam war era counter-culture rockers like the Doors and Jimi Hendrix.

Half Real is a warbling announcement: this dude is not over getting dumped for another guy. It feels like a plea. Nothing is set in stone, real love is not a “nail in the wall”. He is so torn up that it seems like he’d rather have the nail go through his frontal lobe instead and have it scramble is memories, deleting both good and bad. The song settles into a hypnotic stride for multiple measures at the end of a plucked lullaby, and by the time you’ve caught on, it ends abruptly. You’ve been dumped.

Au Pays Du Cocaine is yet another plea. The echoey toy piano keys set up a fantasy dreamlike world where our singer is still in denial of his lover leaving. “You can change” over and over again, until “you can still choose me”. He offers compromises as he navigates his ship in choppy waters as a sailor in an envy-green coat. The imagery continues in Bow Down where he shifts his outlook, admits that he is no longer in control (he was the captain and now he’s the ship), and he accepts his suffering. The song structures we have been familiarizing ourselves with begin to disintegrate and crack so that his newfound torment to sprout through.

Taxes is a highlight. Our main guy is saying “I actually do suck but I am being punished too hard for it right now”.

If you want me to pay my taxes, you’d better come over here with a crucifix.

The man simply can not and will not conform to the norms of society. He feels possessed or even demonic for this, and it reminds us of the suffering he expressed early on in the album. He is helplessly beholden to his nature. He croons over some final fireworks of grand piano and drums at the end of the song.

Long Island City Here I Come is a frantic, cathartic, and monumental ending. It is dense with imagery (biblical and otherwise) and proclamations. The thrumming of the bassline stands next to the frenetic kick and hi-hat of the drums like locomotive pistons, careening ahead. Our guy is saying a lot here, and it all feels like a climactic announcement of rebellion and warning - he’s coming and he is tearing it all down. Long Island City is right next to Brooklyn, so I guess it won’t be long.

This whole album is a quick 45 minutes, and each track pops with its own hue. A perhaps scattered and unsure narrator eventually finds who he is, relies on that truth, and trusts in it. His concern with the unstoppable rebellion within him culminates in an exciting and almost prideful climax at the end. It’s great. 8.5 if I have to give it a number.