Geese - Getting Killed (2025)
i should burn in hell (but i don't deserve this) - september 30, 2025
When I was a kid, I would wonder what future genres would emerge from music. I was very confused as to what the future of music would be, since it feels like all of the instruments were invented and it felt like the list of genres was pretty well-rounded and complete. Yeah, sorry, kid, it’s not that simple. The end of history is bullshit and the passage of time is brutal and endless. The future loves to barge in on you right when you thought there was nothing left to do. Sometimes it stumbles in, drunk, at one in the morning, drinking all your diet Pepsi, stammering out the remains of its own ruined thought patterns and then passing out on the carpet. Getting Killed is what that feels like.
Geese have formed themselves an intriguing little niche in the fragmented and scattered ruins of the once-continent spanning empire of indie. It’s somewhere between the self-aware pretentiousness of early-00s assholes like LCD Soundsystem and the quarter-life crisis skittishness of a band like the Plan. They go off in a hundred million different directions that all feel cohesive (whatever that means anymore) but feel really, really funny placed next to each other. You know how orks in 40k can make things into reality if they believe it hard enough? The grooves are insane, the vibes are free & clear, everything locks together. Cameron Winter howls like a wounded dog on top of the blended puree.
It’s no real use at this point going into the whole torch-carrying rock savior narrative, because reductionist shit like that buries all the many voices who have gotten us to this point. However, the sheer mileage Geese can pull out of their simultaneously diverse and concise sound is seriously impressive. Sometimes I feel like I’m listening to an album I had to yoink off a radio station’s back servers as an MPAA cease and desist rots in my mailbox, only it’s ripped out from its proper context in the past and violently demonstrated in our present. I’ve had my eye on him since I heard “$0,” so Winter’s rising stock on the Great American Songwriter board should also not go unnoticed. His lyricism captures everything from a biblical allusion on how hard he’s about to kick your ass to quite possibly the most dangerous vocal stim ever placed into a song. His words (yes, even the foot fetish ones) feel pre-made for crossfaded karaoke night.
It’s like a road trip with everyone you love and a tire you’re pretty certain is about to explode at any moment. It gets real wonky and wobbly and feels like it can fall into shambles any second but for now it’s a moment in time you think you’re gonna be remembering forever. It gets weirdly intimate and awkward but there’s never really a better time to just say whatever shit you want to get out into the air (at least until the tire explodes). It feels like literally anything can happen.
Getting Killed is shiny and iridescent like the co-op party admission bracelet hanging off of your limp, weak white-boy wrist the morning after a night you’re not sure how you should feel about forgetting. It’s baked in the ever-present irony that nobody can ever escape from anymore, but at least it’s the type of irony your best real-life friend jams in to help your accidental emotional connection go down easier. In a world where your brain is getting smashed like plate glass at every moment, that sounds like a good deal. Maybe that’s the best you can ask for anymore, really.
and i really fucking mean it this time