How do you make sense of an America where cruelty is celebrated and the surreal is becoming mundane? Is there a way to rationalize everything going on without going nuts? Geese channels the angst of a generation watching their country fall apart in front of their eyes with their newest album, “Getting Killed.”
Geese are one of the only bands around today that have been able to keep an atmosphere of mystery around them. Their frontman, Cameron Winter, is the type of lead singer whose personality is seemingly impenetrable. His interview answers feel fabricated. His personality seems like a mask, as if he’s toying with those trying to make sense of him. He’s an ambiguous person.
Like Winter, Geese is a deconstructive band– it seems they’re trying to expand and explore what it means to be a guitar-centered “rock band.” In doing so, they are making some of the most exciting music of the past few years.
“Getting Killed” can feel theatrical and absurd, almost like a caricature of rock, but that’s what Geese seem to be chasing. The album acts as a mirror to reality and to the genres that shaped their sound.
How can you make a standard rock album when freedom of expression is at risk? Geese answer the troubles of the time with experimentation, playing with the recognizable sounds of rock in some ways and in others, simply throwing them out the window.
The album’s opener, “Trinidad”, starts off with a standard funk groove. Winter’s falsetto eases us in, albeit with an ominous tone. As soon as the chorus comes crashing in, the song dissolves into chaos.
The album’s closer, “Long Island City Here I Come,” follows a similar pattern, where a recognizable rock structure is set up in the beginning, but by the end, the song has fallen into such cathartic disarray that any rhythm set up at the beginning has been almost completely lost.
That isn’t to say the album is difficult to listen to or enjoy. It is a rewarding and genuinely fun album to listen to. Songs such as “Taxes,” “Bow Down” and “Islands of Man” are very palatable while still experimenting with genres and sounds. Winter’s versatile singing voice is impossible to pin down and so fun to listen to. Geese’s musicians are all experts of groove, crafting Winter’s lyrics build on the air of experimentation and oscillate between emotions frequently.
Still, his anger is prominent. In songs like “Taxes,” Winter boasts– assumingly to the U.S. government– that if you “want me to pay my taxes/ you better come over with a crucifix/ you’re gonna have to nail me down.” On “100 Horses”, one of the album’s prior singles, Winter sings from the perspective of the assumed personification of the military, “General Smith”, who says that “all people must smile in war”, and that all people “must die scared or else die nervous.”
The anger is palpable. Geese are at odds with their government—one that seems increasingly more likely to put itself over its citizens’ needs.
Geese aren’t the first band to write songs against the government. However, they are writing about America in new and exciting ways, which is something to celebrate. Winter references the fervent rat race that dominates America on the track “Getting Killed.”
“I can’t even hear myself talk/ I’m trying to talk over everybody in the world/ I can’t even taste my own tears/ They fall into an even sadder bastard’s eyes.”
He doesn’t have to outright tell us that political violence is more normalized than it has been in decades, but the album’s opening chorus, “There’s a bomb in my car,” makes that pretty clear.
The other side of Winter’s lyricism feels much more personal and vulnerable. On “Au Pays du Cocaine,” a beautiful ballad about compromising with a lover, Winter sings that they can “be free and still come home,” that they can “change and still choose me”. On “Islands of Man”, he asks repeatedly, “Will you stop running away from what is real and what is fake?”
At the center of Winter’s lyrical prowess is his ability to voice those feelings of angst and melancholy that embellish our lives. Very few song writers today can boast an understanding of the feelings of this generation as well as Winter can.
At the center of “Getting Killed” is the understanding that life in America is strange, emotional and relentless. That being young during troubling times can feel like a constant ending of the world. Who knows what the world will look like in five years? 10 years?
We must trudge on through reality. That’s non-negotiable. The album’s closing lines word this better than most: “Like Charlamagne on the midnight bus/ I have no idea where I’m going/ Here I come.”
Francisco Aguirre-Ghiso can be reached at [email protected].
