Will Geese Redeem Noisy, Lawless Rock and Roll?

On a caller Friday night, the indie-rock set Geese—which formed successful New York City successful 2016, erstwhile its members were inactive a mates of years abbreviated of the ineligible driving age—played the last day of its North American tour. The show, astatine the Brooklyn Paramount, a baroque nineteen-twenties movie location turned performance hall, was a jubilant homecoming. (Even Mr. Met was successful attendance, paying respects, perhaps, aft the band’s bassist, Dominic DiGesu, told a reporter, “If determination are going to beryllium billionaires successful the world, the Mets are the lone happening worthy funding, successful my opinion.”) In the months since Geese released its 3rd workplace album, “Getting Killed,” the set has been rhapsodically heralded arsenic the redeemer of a definite benignant of noisy, lawless stone and roll. Critics emotion making specified breathless declarations, and fans emotion to scoff astatine them. But isn’t controlled hysteria benignant of the point? Geese itself is simply a melodramatic outfit, prone to bursts of noise, meandering digressions, and feral bleating. Responding to this euphony with crushed and reserve feels astatine odds, successful immoderate cardinal way, with its spirit.

At the Paramount—Friday was the 2nd of 2 sold-out shows there—Geese’s beforehand man, Cameron Winter, invited members of 1 of the opening bands onstage for an abbreviated screen of the Stooges’ “Fun House,” an astir eight-minute song, from 1970, astir who knows what. (“Yeah, I came to play and I mean to play astir / Yeah, I came to play and I mean to play existent good.”) “Please invited horns and crap similar that,” Winter said, arsenic the musicians ambled onstage. Geese is often compared to ambitious turn-of-the-millennium bands similar Radiohead and the Strokes, but the Stooges might, successful fact, beryllium the astir close analogue—attitudinally, if not rather musically. There’s a petulance to Geese, and particularly to Winter, who has been known to messiness astir with journalists, fibbing, dodging questions, oregon giving deranged answers. (The band’s evident deficiency of involvement successful projecting sincerity, oregon successful earnestly engaging with the press, besides feels precise millennium-coded to me: ironic detachment, writ large.) I person travel to bask this astir Geese. I bash not needfully request my manus held aft an album’s release, and Winter’s indifference erstwhile it comes to annotating his songwriting creates a benignant of pleasant friction with the affectional strength of the euphony itself. When the set appeared connected “The Zane Lowe Show” recently, Winter responded to a question astir the penning of “Husbands,” 1 of the album’s champion and astir fraught songs, by saying, “I don’t remember,” venturing lone that it mightiness person occurred adjacent the Gowanus Canal, a famously putrid waterway successful Brooklyn. “You know, a dolphin died successful determination past week . . . oregon something,” Winter offered. He was wearing sunglasses inside.

This attack works successful portion due to the fact that “Getting Killed” is specified a earthy and unprotected creation work. Winter is evidently idiosyncratic who feels unusually deeply, adjacent if he’s not precise funny successful performing cathexis extracurricular the studio. At the show, I caught myself involuntarily tearing up during “Au Pays du Cocaine,” a loose, heart-wrenching opus that builds to a benignant of transcendent climax. It’s imaginable that the rubric is simply a warped allusion to Bruegel’s “Het Luilekkerland,” an lipid painting, from 1567, that depicts the psychic aftermath of sloth and hedonism; “Het Luilekkerland” loosely translates to “The Land of Cockaigne,” a mythical medieval wonderland successful which each appetites, nevertheless deviant, are satiated. (In due French, the operation would beryllium “Le Pays de Cocagne.”) The transportation mightiness consciousness similar a stretch, if lone the limits (and perils) of contentment weren’t specified a cardinal taxable successful Winter’s lyrics. As helium sings connected the album’s rubric track, “I’m getting killed by a beauteous bully life.”

Of course, it’s hard to accidental precisely what “Au Pays du Cocaine” is about. Winter’s vocals are pleading, arsenic though helium is begging idiosyncratic not to leave: “You tin enactment with maine and conscionable unreal I’m not there”; “You tin beryllium escaped and inactive travel home”; “Baby, you tin alteration and inactive take me.” He sounds, to me, similar a idiosyncratic successful a faltering narration trying to marque immoderate concessions are indispensable to not get left. (Something astir the opus reminds maine of an particularly heartbreaking country successful the penultimate occurrence of “Mad Men,” successful which Betty Draper, aft being fixed a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer, tells her teen-age daughter, “I’ve learned to judge radical erstwhile they archer you it’s over. They don’t privation to accidental it, truthful it’s usually the truth.”) In the euphony video, Winter is seated astatine a eating table, singing to a baby. At the end, helium walks upstairs, hoists himself into a crib, and assumes the fetal position. (When Winter was increasing up, his parents had an unfastened marriage, which his mother, Molly Roden Winter, described successful somewhat exacting item successful a 2024 memoir, “More.”) At the Paramount, for immoderate reason, the enactment that truly got maine is besides 1 of the song’s astir inscrutable: “Like a sailor successful a large greenish boat.” It’s a meaningless image, which I accidental is cardinal to its beauty—the imaginable for projection. It inevitably makes maine deliberation of radical I person lost, present adrift successful immoderate unknowable sea. Winter’s voice, froggy and sad, filled the theatre. He played a leggy small guitar solo earlier the 2nd verse. The tempo decelerated. I felt, briefly, arsenic though thing wrong maine was dissolving.

Even “Taxes,” perchance the astir euphoric opus connected “Getting Killed,” is some darkly comic (“If you privation maine to wage my taxes / You amended travel implicit with a crucifix / You’re gonna person to nail maine down”) and conscionable acheronian (“Doctor, doctor, heal yourself / And I volition interruption my ain bosom / I volition interruption my ain bosom from present on”). These songs thin heavy connected the marvel of Winter’s voice, wobbly and slurred, and connected the drummer, Max Bassin, who plays with tremendous restraint but a large woody of emotion. (The percussion connected “Husbands,” 1 of my favourite tracks of the year, is slinky, nervous, weird, perfect.)

There’s a basal level of melancholy and loneliness to everything Winter writes, which mightiness person to bash with the authorities of the modern world, oregon possibly with the clip during which helium came of age. Winter, who is twenty-three, had precocious turned eighteen erstwhile the COVID pandemic deed New York. In an quality connected the video bid “A View from a Bridge,” successful which guests basal extracurricular and archer a communicative into a reddish telephone, Winter spoke astir buying a virtual-reality headset during that tenuous, gruesome spring. He started messing astir connected a V.R. chat, and 1 time recovered himself connected a Russian server acceptable astatine a state presumption successful Siberia. He came upon 2 lovers successful the snow. “Something astir that was precise tragic,” helium said. “It was a precise quality infinitesimal and I deliberation astir it each the time.” It is imaginable that “Getting Killed” and its predecessor, “3D Country,” from 2023, are the archetypal 2 large works of COVID-era music—not truthful overmuch successful their evocation of the events themselves but successful the mode the pandemic’s contours of isolation and fearfulness look to person shaped Winter’s consciousness astatine specified a important infinitesimal successful his life.

In Brooklyn, Geese came backmost onstage for an encore. “This is the past amusement of the U.S. tour, which would marque this the past song,” Winter said. “We lone thought it close to extremity this circuit with a screen of Waylon Jennings, the fable who lives connected successful our hearts.” The set began playing “Trinidad,” the way that opens “Getting Killed.” It is decidedly not a Waylon Jennings song, though I accidental it shares a benignant of coarse outlaw ethos. “I try,” Winter moaned. The guitarist, Emily Green, played an antsy small riff. “I effort / I effort truthful hard.” Winter took a crisp breath. “I try,” helium sang again, earlier leaning into the song’s frantic, screamed refrain: “There’s a weaponry successful my car!” The assemblage went nuts—crowd-surfing, moshing, collapsing connected itself. Lights flashed. There was a feeling of giddy, corporate release. Green, inactive fiddling with a guitar pedal, was the past to permission the stage. The assemblage filed from the theatre, dazed, satiated, the bully benignant of emptied out. ♦