Geese: Getting Killed

This is popular? This is popular. Or is it? Honestly, this is where my fragmented brain and the fragmented music scene (outside of Taylor Swift, of course) twists my understanding of what’s actually popular and what’s popular in my insular world of occasional mentions in podcasts or some satellite radio show or the passing hipster mention by some mustachioed young artist. Because nobody really talks about music nowadays in the larger sense outside of… Taylor Swift. It’s just not the monoculture thing that it used to be. When bands like U2 ruled the Earth and sucked up all the musical air. Or even when bands like Guns N’ Roses seemed to be just about everywhere. But, honestly, I could probably walk the streets of NYC for two hours and not find a single person who’s heard of Geese, let alone heard their new record, Getting Killed. Shit, the same could be said for Dinosaur Jr. or Guided by Voices or any number of bands I’d generally consider huuuuge.

Putting all of that aside, it is shocking to me that anyone is even into this music. Or maybe it’s not. Again, my musical brain is broken. But this Beck for 2025, this Neutral Milk Hotel meets David Byrne weirdo freak fest (most evident on the title track “Getting Killed”). It’s all a bit much for the average music consumer, one would think. And quite surprising after their last album from 2021, Projector. Which had a much more post-punk sound, slinky basslines and staccato guitar plinking and all. It was definitely going for a cool aesthetic that felt at times a little gimmicky and a little derivative of something leather-clad and late 70s. But I liked it nonetheless. This record leans more toward Cameron Winter’s solo album from 2024, Heavy Metal — which was definitely at the top of my list of albums of the year. So cool. So different. So endlessly listenable. So, this is a good shift, I’d say. I just don’t know who, exactly, this music is for. Certainly not your average schmuck walking down Hudson.

I am having a bit of trouble describing this thing. It does, at times, have a throwback quality to it. But I’m not really sure what era it’s throwing back to. And then all sorts of things kind of hit me. Morphine? No, that’s not it. Certainly its groove and Winter’s oddball voice and even more oddball lyrics speak to some sort of hippie collective at times. But I would hate to paint this with any kind of jam-y brush because that’s not really it at all. Trust me, I would turn this shit off before he got out note one. Sly & the Family Stone? Nope, not it either. I’m not even sure if I’d qualify this as a rock record at the end of the day. Classification kind of being bullshit anyway, but with its rambling, shambling pianos and horns and side percussion and whatnot, it feels sometimes — like on songs like “Half Real” — as if he just got a bunch of musicians in a room, handed them something and asked them to play along. That tune in particular reminds me of some of those Elephant 6 records that dominated my record collection for a while in the early 2000s. It’s all very organic feeling. Jonathan Richman? Maybe? I feel like there are so many touchstones, but also so many things that you’d think you’d want to lean into that he doesn’t.

Because, ultimately, this is some weird shit. Not like Tom Waits weird. Or unpleasant. But certainly songs like “Bow Down” are like he took a Black Francis song, brought it to Mexico, let it spend a weekend chugging tequila and not sleeping and took it for a long, un-air-conditioned ride back Cali and dropped it in the desert somewhere without a phone or a wallet. And that’s my take on that.