Getting Killed review: wild-eyed and surprisingly referential”>
Geese. Photo by Lewis Evans.
It wasn’t supposed to go this way. When Cameron Winter released his excellent solo album Heavy Metal in late 2024 it felt like a frontman outgrowing his band, Geese. The reception to that album of soulful and eccentric piano ballads was overwhelmingly positive, with consensus forming around the idea that Winter would likely ditch his bandmates to continue on his Gen Z Dylan path alone. This may seem dismissive of Geese but then the New York band haven’t always presented themselves too seriously, either. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Winter described their 2021 debut Projector as “a goddamn ripoff” of the British post-punk bands that were trending at the time.
Getting Killed, the third and astoundingly strong Geese album, isn’t what you would describe as entirely original either. Geese are still referential, it’s just that their references have become more unexpected. They’re fans of free jazz player Sonny Sharrock, Television, Radiohead, and Suicide; artists who, like Geese, enjoy pushing out the edges of tradition until it is slightly wonky and demands a second look. Take album opener “Trinidad,” for example. Set to a deviant groove, the song feels primed to explode at any given moment but instead stays contained as Winter yells “There’s a bomb in my car” and, later, “Get in asshole, let’s drive.” “Husbands” and “Bow Down,” meanwhile, find drummer Max Bassin adding a fidgety quality underneath Winter’s wandering baritone.
Produced in Los Angeles by Kenneth Blume (formerly known as Kenny Beats) Geese made Getting Killed as this past winter’s wildfires raged. That intense backdrop can be felt in antsy and screeching songs like “100 Horses” that, like many of Geese’s best moments, traverses a middle ground between rock bar jukebox staple and wild-eyed jam band territory.
Elsewhere on the album Geese utilise Ukrainian choir samples and write songs imagining IRS officials as crucifix-wielding saviors. It’s a heady mix delivered by a band whose love of music runs so deep their only option is to deconstruct it and rebuild it from memory. Winter, it seems, was right to stick by his friends.
