When a non-metal album is this good, the Great Ape mandates that we write about it – it’s unclear if it’s for posterity or humiliation. But when you have a band called Geese, the latter seems more likely. New York City fowl collective owe just as much of their attack to Bruce Springsteen and Television as to Swans and The Velvet Underground, as its drawling and honkin’ blend of roots rock, noise rock, blues, country, funk, and post-punk is a clusterfuck that feels distinctly like something a band called Geese would make. Mastermind Cameron Winter’s warbling drawls, Emily Green’s smooth bluesy plucking and jagged shutters, Dominic Digesu’s groovy bass undercurrent, and Max Bassin’s rock-solid drumming collide – all in the service of the sonic incarnation of the uncanny. Geese offers another slab of rock’s fringe movements that builds upon critically acclaimed predecessor 4D Country. Like its cover, Getting Killed is both angelic and violent, smooth and jagged – and undeniably American.
While its openers serve to showcase Geese’s two extreme sides in explosively screamy noise rock (“Trinidad”1) and bluesy pop-country (“Cobra”), the uncanniness of Getting Killed is much more nuanced. Beneath each guitar riff and yearning melody, just as much with its more jagged movements, is a dedication to deterioration. Most tracks begin with a solid funk groove or a predictable chord progression, an undercurrent of dissolution growing over the course of its three-to-six minutes. Unlike the improvised randomness so many artists claim as a reflection of group chemistry, Geese’s movements feel calculated to the minutest detail in the service of a parodied and uncanny version of rock music, such as maddeningly repetitive riffs (“Husbands,” “Islands of Man,” “100 Horses”), repetitive cliche lyrics drawled with irony and apathy (“Cobra,” “Half Real”), and splattered movements guided by heart and hate (“Trinidad,” “Getting Killed”).
The blend of tones that exist here is noteworthy, as the sunny country, groovy punk, and jagged noise movements feel anachronistic on paper yet somehow feel exactly what Geese ought to be doing. Noisier tracks move seamlessly into the more melodic and vice versa (the brooding “100 Horses” to the ethereal “Half Real”; the smooth ballad “Au Pays du Cocaine” to the chaotic and arrhythmic “Bow Down” and explosive “Taxes”), highlighting the intentionality behind the curtain of Getting Killed. Winter’s vocals are initially jarringly loud and off-kilter, but just as the twinkling quality that emerges from asynchronous guitar/piano noodles (“Getting Killed,” “Islands of Man”) or the brass emerges in short bursts like gusts of wind (“Trinidad,” “Husbands”), the drawling baritone stumbles upon vocal lines that get seared into the mind, catchy and seamless in their delivery – although initially feared lazy (“Cobra,” “Half Real,” “Long Island City Here I Come”). Geese, while embodying much more than just noise rock, nonetheless captures lightning in the bottle with its layers of intensity giving way to an uncanny catchiness.
Geese’s more intense moments recall the noise rock/post-punk misanthropy of White Suns or the quirky squonks of Black Midi, but its uncanny country twang recalls the clouded and colloquial conversations of Mark Z. Danielewski’s book Tom’s Crossing: yes, it’s a western, but a caricature of it with a bleak heart beating at its core. Geese embodies rock’s most extreme peripheries in a breed of music that is as alienating as it is catchy, unique and on-brand for a band whose caliber of sound feels uncanny, otherworldly, and delightfully apeshit. Sure, it ain’t metal, but Geese offers some of the most intriguing music of the year regardless.
Tracks to Check Out: “Trinidad,” “Cobra,” “Getting Killed,” “100 Horses,” “Long Island City Here I Come”2
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