Brooklyn’s alternative rock band Geese delivers their boldest album yet with Getting Killed, their fourth studio release.
Fronted by Cameron Winter, with guitarist Emily Green, bassist Dominic DiGesu, and drummer Max Bassin, the band pushes their controlled chaos style to new heights. The band first got together in high school, and after signing to Partisan Records, they released Projector in 2021 – a great label debut. But they really hit it out of the park with their 2023 release 3D Country, one of my favourite rock albums of the 2020s. It sounds inspired by classic rock but still so fresh – like it has a ‘dad rock ’palette but no framework, so the band just deploys these sounds like paint against a wall, or out the barrel of a gun. The songs feature fun left turns that you won’t see coming, balanced with catchy choruses, cathartic song structures, and a frenetic version of 90s guitar work.
Frontman Cameron Winter, at only 24 years old, has been a very singular and astonishingly special voice in alternative music. His vocal range is frankly absurd. One moment he sounds on the edge of falling apart, teetering on being out of tune, or sing-speaking with the inflection and wisdom of a 70-year-old. On the flip side, he can hoot and holler like a firecracker in full parade uniform. Lyrically, he is just as creative, going from seemingly nonsensical word association to unabashedly earnest poetry.
Getting Killed emerged from a whirlwind ten-day recording session in January 2025 with producer Kenny Beats at his Los Angeles studio. The compressed timeline resulted in the band getting even looser and more explorative than before.
Opener Trinidad is absolutely wild – I wouldn’t even recommend it for a first-time listener (instead, I’d point them to the first single Taxes). The first time I heard this song, I was so baffled by the looseness and insanity on display. Even as a fan, I wrote it off as being too off-the-wall for its own good. After getting the full album, I can’t get enough of it. Structurally, it’s dead simple – quiet-loud-quiet-loud – but shows its virtuosity in its execution. It’s carried with a bluesy swagger and an odd time signature, before exploding with each chorus, with Winter yelling “there’s a bomb in my car”. The drums thunderously freestyle and jump across the left and right channels like a tennis match, while a trumpet jumps in and out of the mix like a commentator. Give this one a listen on some speakers with a great soundstage – hearing the different elements jump around the stereo field on a setup with good separation definitely won me over to this one.
The album is less outwardly chaotic from here on out, but doesn’t diminish in quality. The songs jam a bit more than they did on 3D Country, with some being less snappy and zany. The lyrics reflect this too – there is more chanting and thematic repetitions that can sound bizarre on the surface but reveal lots of emotional weight if you give them time (a core trait of Winter’s songwriting). The track that follows, Cobra, is one of the more straightforward tracks on the album (for their standards), with an earworm guitar and synth melody that complements the lovestruck lyrics.
Au Pays du Cocaine and Taxes follow a similar suit of simpler, catchy compositions. These both threw me off on first listen with their odd lyrical metaphors, but have become two of my favourites. Au Pays du Cocaine portrays itself to me as a song from a parent’s perspective, with Winter crooning and begging the subject that they can choose independence, while being able to come home when they need to. Taxes has a Radiohead-inspired energy change halfway through, with some amazing guitar interplay that shows they can do straightforward catharsis just as well as their more obtuse songwriting. The song reckons with guilt, with the protagonist sentencing themselves to crucifixion.
For anyone looking to demo some new hi-fi at your local Richer Sounds, this is a great track to use – it’s dynamic across the frequency and stereo spectrum, and a good system will bring out the best in its cathartic ending. Tracks Getting Killed and 100 Horses feature more rock-driven force, with some interesting instrumental additions that pop up quite randomly but never distract. The song Half Real is the only spot on the album for me that doesn’t hit a home run. It’s still a great track, but it doesn’t have a trick up its sleeve like most others on the album, so it sits slightly glossed over in the track list for me.
The guitar playing across the board deserves serious praise. The electric guitar and bass playing is never obviously virtuosic (no eye-roll blues riffs on this one), but they manage to play into the controlled chaos energy that the band does so well. For example, on the closer, Long Island City Here I Come, the guitars speed up with the song, and play simple pentatonic riffs with a loose punk energy. It doesn’t stay in conventional timing, but never feels out of time. It’s a real tight-rope to walk between genuine randomness and intentional looseness, but I am constantly floored at the precision of the performances. The sound of the guitars also manages to convey a gritty quality without relying on gratuitous distortion, simply letting the performance speak for itself. The drumming deserves just as much praise and is the glue that keeps the controlled chaos together. The drum parts perfectly suit and enhance the energy of a track – it enhances the more straightforward moments like Husbands, but also carries the mental breakdown of Trinidad into oblivion.
Geese manage to hit it out of the park with this album. It’s not a big left-turn from their other output, but it sounds more effortless in execution than ever before. The band and frontman Cameron Winter have a lightning-in-a-bottle quality that has me so excited about their longevity and career. They have a certain confidence in their balance of challenging yet catchy rock, which is both familiar yet really bold. If you like the sounds of The Strokes or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but also appreciate the idiosyncratic qualities of bands like Television or the Talking Heads, you’ll be right at home with Getting Killed.
Author: Elliot, Holborn Store
