A review of the latest Geese album, the long awaited follow up to 3D Country.
Count me among the many Geese fans who eagerly awaited Getting Killed – the band’s fourth studio album and follow-up to their masterpiece 3D Country. Their last album encapsulated everything modern indie rock has been lacking in recent years: carefree, jovial volatility; quirky yet technical playing; and infectious, no-filler cuts that forges a path previously untouched. 3D Country was an instant classic that, to a reluctant cynic like me, portended a diminished follow-up. And so, when Getting Killed finally arrived, instead of immediately loving or being disenchanted with it like so many follow-ups to great albums, I was more so confused by the general orientation Geese chose to take.
After the first few initial listens I found myself in an unexpected spot: I liked parts of the album, yet nothing gave me that “holy shit” moment that we experienced with 3D Country. The band was certainly reaching for something new and honest, but something else about the songwriting felt thinned out – even with other songs verifying Geese still had a white hot staff of inventiveness. Let me try to explain without letting that cynicism get in the way of appreciating an otherwise remarkable album. In a big picture songwriting-sense, Getting Killed is centered around spaced out instrumental vamping. There are moments where the band seems content with vamping around a theme and giving the music space to meander (Husbands and Half Real are immediate examples). Admittedly, though, this is where the vibe of the music begins to feel paradoxically unclear, yet simplistic. Instead of these occasions allowing for moments of charged stillness before rapturous lighting, some songs feel like they snake clumsily towards an amateur resolution. Let me explain.
Trinidad starts the album with a blast. Thanks to its detonating hook, “[t]here’s a bomb in my car,” the song has been an immediate favorite among Geese fans. As evidenced by scores of videos of mosh pit melees at the drop of the hook, the song is catnip to Geese fans. Yet for me, it has quickly turned into a flat, auto-skip song. Based around a remedial blues riff carried by Dominic DiGesu, it’s among Geese’s most simplistic songs. And unfortunately, that simplicity does not earn the intensity of its shouted “bomb in my car” refrain. Uncharacteristically for Geese’s songwriting, the song doesn’t churn enough in its own angst to make it feel textured or earned. Instead, Trinidad leans so hard on that one idea that it breaks through its weak railing and falls into inane territory. Trinidad suffers because of its naked, impotent structure being the foundation for featureless shouting. This type of undue-simplification appears later on in the album with Taxes.
However, where Trinidad falls short, Cobra more than surpasses. It’s an infectious, head-nodding song that I immediately clicked with. Like a Joni Mitchell song, the opening theme sounds like a long-forgotten, yet readily blissful nursery rhyme. And Geese delivers back to back to back hits with the aforementioned song, Husbands, and the titled track! With Husbands, Geese’s New York derived confidence exudes. Cameron Winter’s vocal work is both pleasantly stunted and stunning, especially with the opening lyric “I’ll repeat what I say / But I’ll never explain / So you don’t have to waste your time / You don’t have to waste your time.” Alongside the careful melodic splices by Emily Green, Max Bassin’s drumming is sensational.
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And on drumming, I want to note that at this early stage of the record Max is showcasing an amazing new development. Here, Max’s drumming is sometimes delicate, always tasteful, and a surprising diversion from his characteristically ferocious hammering. It’s always been clear that Keith Moon is a tremendous influence on Max; but on Getting Killed he may have also been influenced by great drummers on the opposite end of intensity (say, Charlie Watts or Levon Helm). That presumed influence helped produce a wonderful drum performance on Getting Killed. Max is so graceful, so stylistically restrained throughout performances on this record that it’s hard to accept it’s the same drummer that pummels away on loud tracks like 2122 or covers of Interstellar Overdrive. His playing on songs like Husbands and Long Island City Here I Come show Max’s tremendous growth and dexterity as a drummer. Such an impressive, creative switch-up deserves to be praised.
A chopped-up burst of vocal counterpoint opens the song Getting Killed, and it didn’t take long for me to single out this track as my favorite song from the album. It is quintessential Geese with their carefree instrumental and vocal wildness, mixed in with playful loud-quiet-loud structure. Max is quaking all around the drum set and Emily is violently whipping riffs up and down the neck. Those disorderly vocals deliver contemplative if not nonsensical lyrics; but here I want to single out the last stanza of the song: “I’m getting killed by a pretty good life.”
In an interview with the Zane Lowe, Cameron stated that he tries not to be too exact with “stirring,” direct lyrics because doing so often detracts from the artistic impact and ages poorly. But as a reluctant parasocial fan, I have to question what he’s trying to tell us beyond the plain reading of the text in that last line. Cameron, the physically domineering, maladroit frontman has aura. I know that’s silly to say, but it’s also indisputable. He has this somewhat indescribable charismatic radiance about him partly from his emotionally dynamic, breakout debut solo album, and partly for his deflective public persona. And so I’m sympathetic when I hear a line like that. He’s self-aware of his aura but is also injured from it. It’s hard to see his and the band’s fame waning anytime soon, but they must also contend with not having the same level of grace or space to be normal, grounded young adults like their actual friends; Or even the similarly aged fans they look out to while onstage.
Watching their high school friends move onto the next chapters of their young life and even seeing one of their own bandmates, Foster Hudson, leave the band for college must always be in tension with the supposedly rockstar with total freedom lifestyles they currently live. Perhaps, Geese has an easier time reckoning with this reality than peer bands who maybe got their big break during or after college – such as Black Country, New Road. Or perhaps, these lyrics suggest that the band is still very much grappling with seeing the continued death of a normal life proportionate with their success. Either way, that mix of relatability and distance defines both Cameron’s persona and the band’s identity. Said tension is on every song on Getting Killed and likely felt within the fan community as the band continues their celebrated arch.
Shifting away from abstract musing, two songs that I actually have concrete connections to are Island of Men and Bow Down – both of which I heard when Geese was on the road post-3D Country. And I am glad to see that they both translated well from their workshopping states to polished cuts. With Island of Men, the balance between the twangy guitar riff and the building block percussion is a fantastic layer for the rest of the song to slip in and out of. There’s more of that vamping in space that I mentioned, but with more direction and attention than other songs. Subtle horns and faint piano flares add color without drawing attention to themselves. Bow Down continues Cameron’s streak of religious-infused lyrical screeds, asking questions that feel more like they come from a possessed heretic than a sober cleric. Despite the song having a sort of soft coda, the energy is brisk and intentionally discharged.
With Half Real, Dom provides an awesome melodic gallop that does more than outline the chord progression; it situates an otherwise untidy song on a tight, driven path. His playing on Half Real was especially captivating on the Getting Killed tour as you could see how relaxed and locked in he is when providing those repetitive and necessary outlining notes. Sadly, that is as much of a positive spin I can put on Half Real; almost everything else about the song feels scattered and directionless. From the half-minded lyrics to the clashed-out drumming to the over stratified guitar fiddling, the song is regrettably so loose that it falls apart at the end with a mercifully hard cut.
The instrumentation of Half Real is so sloppy that it makes a dilettante like me want to petition the band to try a serious rearrangement of the song. I keep imagining how much stronger the song could be with a different structure like something the spirit of early Van Morrison: space for acoustic guitar and voice to breathe, warm bass to provide authoritative structure, and laid back percussion instead of full-kit drumming. Cameron’s Waits-eques, drunken crooning doesn’t land any better. Instead of sounding unhinged in a compelling way, it feels unbecoming and bleary. That same issue appears on Au Pays du Cocaine and Long Island City Here I Come, though the latter earns more leeway as the album’s finale.
The last song I want to mention is Taxes – the first single from this album and, from what I can tell, an immediate hit with fans. Unfortunately, I am on the other side of enjoyment with this track. Taxes is a miserably pithy song and fails to stand on its own, much less in the sequence of the album. Taxes, much like Trinidad, highlights my main frustration with Getting Killed. For this to be the full length follow up to the gem that is 3D Country, there are too many moments where the songwriting feels less like a deliberate effort to rein in their impulses and create something refined, and more like a case of Geese simplifying their writing with no clear benefit.
Maybe this undue dumbing-down comes from the band’s desire to appease its growing, diverse audience; or from the shift in producer; or even from recording in Los Angeles ablaze rather than the chaos-comfort of NYC. Whatever the reason, Geese has shown the ability to write wild, emotive, brooding, enthralling, stimulating songs. Does Getting Killed live up to the standard set by the 3D Country? No. But make no mistake that Geese remains capable of consistent, eruptive brilliance and genuinely captivating songwriting. That much will carry Cam, Dom, Max, and Emily toward becoming a defining force in modern music.