Geese

https://media.brooklynvegan.com/xxrzsfjkyw/uploads/2025/07/08/geese-gettingkilled.jpg

Getting Killed is the upcoming fourth studio album by American rock band Geese. It is scheduled to be released on September 26, 2025, through Partisan Records and Play It Again Sam.

1. Trinidad
2. Cobra
3. Husbands
4. Getting Killed
5. Islands of Men
6. 100 Horses
7. Half Real
8. Au Pays du Cocaine
9. Bow Down
10. Taxes
11. Long Island City Here I Come

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phh3oVCtzBg

I think this band should get their own thread, so I stated one.

Excited for this! Loved the last one, but really don't get the hype over Cameron's solo record. Just couldn't grab onto that one.

I have yet to hear the band, but out of context I was amused by this headline.

https://i.imgur.com/SqzcL3l.jpeg

honk honk

i will definitely be checking out the new album! i like this band

new single sounds fantastic imo. classic geese! honk honk

this band should tour with Goose and call it the 'Ducks Tour'

Single is great, sounds like it's live at first and then turns into the studio version.

i thought so too but then listened on spotify as well and think they used a different mix for the video to get that effect ?

"taxes" is wonderful

I could have sworn I started a Geese thread back when I heard '3D Country', which was a fantastic song I think Bee OK nommed in EOY a coupl eof years ago. Anyway, I'm looking forward to this new one a lot.

I discovered them live as they opened for Spoon on the Lucifer on the Sofa tour. They ended up on ILMs Top 77 tracks poll.

Didn't even hear Heavy Metel, the solo album from the lead singer but looking forward to new Geese.

Still great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m1abZODAJ0

yeah that's the song that got me into them. the last album was fun, but that remains a highlight

first track on this is absurdly promising and i look forward to listening to the rest once i'm awake

i had forgotten about this but now am looking forward

lol this was produced by kenny beats? he did a phenomenal job, it sounds fantastic

First song is mind-numbing brilliant, can't wait to hear the rest.

RYM is freaking out insanely over this even by its own freakout standards, will have to tune in

Yeah, this isn't for me, harmonically and melodically close to worthless despite the arrangements and lyricism

Perhaps, but the first song is in 13/4, so it's very much still for me :)

The first song and Half Real were thr highlights for me, more going on musically in those two

it's some decent songs that are absolutely being elevated by the production & arrangements. maybe that will mean i get tired of it before long but there's a lot to like for now

this is a bit jammier and less immediate than their previous but I'm expecting it to kick in on repeat plays

found it really boring

I have to admit I've had it on in the background around two or three times today and not that much has jumped out at me yet. It's just kind of a "noise" at this stage and no one song has really revealed itself among the others. Still think this might be a grower though

Ive never heard of this band before but wow, I hate this. I think I’m officially old. Do they have the best PR team money can buy or something?

At least their band name gives you a pretty good indication of how hard they work on their music.

I'd like to know what people HATE about them to be honest. There's nothing terribly offensive going on here to my ears.

i think the singer has one of the more interesting voices in rock n roll, and it elevated a handful of tracks on the previous album. i was particularly into the tracks that for sounded like they were approaching Steely Dan territory ... but it also seems to me that they are really really interested in projecting an image of nonchalance and that they don't take anything too seriously, and this album seems to amplify that. this coupled with the fact that whoever writes the songs is a terrible lyricist, i think ultimately is a disservice to them and their style. it's just kind of eclectic and unfocused in a way that i find really boring and unappealing, i wish they were more keen on honing the songcraft because they have style and charisma for days but it just feels like it's not being put to good use

Ive never heard this band before but wow, I love this. I think I’m officially sold. Do they have the best production team money can buy or something?

Yeah, part of the attraction of the last album was the luxuriant Gaucho-era Dan stylings of songs like 3D Country (which I still think is fantastic).

Not sure if nonchalance is necessarily what they're necessarily projecting here. Rather it's a much more stripped-down sound that leans away from their poppier side and way into a raggedy, more jam-influenced vibe.

It gives me the impression of a crazed Southern preacher sermonising paranoid rants about taxes and whatnot. It's a stylised flex, and there's a lot of energy in its delivery and the way they experimented with jazzy chops too. I'd say it's different to, say, Malkmusian slacker rock. I don't hear a lot of "can't be arsed" in here.

That said, there's not a lot for me to really sink my teeth into on this one either. Maybe it merits closer listening but this one is missing that pop element that made songs like 3D Country so great. Without it, these songs feel a bit rudderless, a bit abstract and freeform.

Like the Belgian band dEUS, they're at their best when they strike the balance between classic pop and jazzy freakouts, which isn't happening so much here

dEUS rules

That'ssomethibg we can all agree on

Oops, sorry, phone

Pitchfork gave this a 9.0. At work but will listen later.

Ive never heard this band before but wow, I love this. I think I’m officially sold. Do they have the best production team money can buy or something?

― Evan, 26. september 2025 19:20 (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's hiphop-producer Kenny Beats, and it's a really inspired choice.

I actually do like what I heard so far, but also that post was a stupid joke post mostly for my own amusement.

I'm not sure I'm sold on the production (or maybe the mastering?) There's a lot going on here but the lack of dynamics often makes it feel like a soup

Enjoying 'Bow Down'

But... after the album was over '2122' from the previous album came on and I dunno, it really hit the spot. Feels like the singer is being a lot more one-note in his style than on the previous one where he seemed to be trying out a lot of different things, from an Elvisy baritone to intense caterwauling. On this new one he's settled into this slightly irritating tenor that grates after a while

I liked this on first listen, though I broke it off in two parts. I have seen them live so I have a different tolerance for the Jim Morrison thing he has going on. The lyrics do leave a lot to be desired however. "Taxes" is a definite highlight.

i didn't mean to imply that i think the music sounds slacky or underperformed à la Pavement. what i meant was that i get the sense they lean on eclecticism and "random" lyrics in order to avoid being pinned as a band that's trying too hard to craft a set of excellent songs. i don't get Zappa vibes from them at all, but it does strike me as being a distant cousin to his brand of zany Verfremdungseffekt

i haven't paid too much attention to the lyrics yet

about half the songs here are really good and the others feel like sketches that they've done a good job at dressing up with their noodling but i'm not sure if they're going to hold up to repeat listens

I liked this on first listen. Maybe I just don't listen to enough indie rock, but the two things I heard were, broadly, an Arcade Fire/Wolf Parade pomposity and gangbusting wall of sound, and Big Thief-coded Lenker tumble of line-delivery and lyrical nakedness.

Reminds me ofl Soul Coughing (this is a wonderful thing)

I'm hearing 70s Miles in some of this. "Trinidad" sounds a lot like "Honky Tonk" from Get Up With It and the percussion (tablas?) on "Taxes" and "Husbands" is very On the Corner

One of the things I like the most about the new album is that they've now made three very different albums, plus one also very different solo album from the singer, and it makes me excited to hear the next one as well.

This was recorded in 10 days. I admire the expediency but also maybe it could have done with a bit more

I'm not a real big lyrics person. And besides, this isn't the kind of thing where I'd normally pay a lot of attention to them. What is so bad about the lyrics here?

this album is completely taking over my life. of course i was too slow to pick up tix for the ny show, and now they're $180 to get in the door

This was recorded in 10 days. I admire the expediency but also maybe it could have done with a bit more

― Now read it backwards. (dog latin), Sunday, September 28, 2025 6:31 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

if the band is ready to go and well rehearsed that's a ton of time

everyone should read the gq profile, really well done imo: https://www.gq.com/story/five-days-with-geese-americas-most-thrilling-young-rock-band

There’s no way the production/mix was done in the same ten days tbh

The production on this is awesome— the “weak link” (if one exists) is Cameron’s lyrics and bellowvoice, but if (like me) you’ve already fallen in love with his whole ‘thing’— solo album “Heavy Metal”— then one is fairly set up to fall in love with this. It doesn’t sound to my ears like he’s whiffing the landings so much as cutting loose some

I’m reminded of other flawed-but-perfect-for-the-moment NYC band albums (Interpol, The Rapture). These lyrics won’t age well but I hope the production choices inspire people— this sounds equally as informed by US Maple at times as it does by Alex G most of the time

Kimmel is in NY and Geese will be on the show Wednesday

Bristol UK show in March appears to be sold out already, which is bonkers

Just the tracking in 10 days apparently, which yeah isn't particularly notable. I love Kenny Beats as a rock producer/mixer, I'm not an Idles fan but he did some cool stuff on those records.

When I opened this thread I was pretty surprised at the acclaim, because I once again confused this band with Goose.

Oh shit, I've mixed up those two and thought until this moment that Goose moved to NYC and gotten an image makeover.

lol yeah it's very confusing

Kenny Beats? weird I had no idea. Hope he secured them a Smoke DZA verse for the remix.

really can't handle this dude's voice, sorry

As far as current popular indie / rock music goes, my forties have largely been defined by a general feeling of "this band? Really?"

I chalk this up to being old, of course, and I am also old enough to have grown comfortable with the idea that not everything is for me

These lyrics won’t age well

maybe not, but finding a bug in my car will never be the same

i love cameron winter and i love this record

as far as 00s indie comps go, his vibes are v julian casablancas, aloof rich NYer raised on the classics grows up to be indie wunderkind kinda thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YI0D5epwuI

It is shocking to me just how much he sounds like Thom Yorke on the new album, I never got that on Heavy Metal. But like, Thom Yorke on T

Yeah he sounds so much like Thom here that I cannot help but hear the album as a roundabout King of Limbs tribute

he sounds too american to remind me that much of yorke but i hear what you mean. the radiohead album it reminded me of on first listen was amnesiac but mostly just for the first track.

There are a couple of “this is mixed like a Nigel mix” moments, too— the first half of “Taxes” with its hard panning

yeah i can very much hear that

Thom spends so much time nowadays in his higher register that you can forget what he used to sound like

can someone explain which lyrics are so terrible? i don't generally listen much to lyrics on first/second/third pass, and what I have heard I couldn't really discern anything so bad?

I detect no Thom Yorke in guy's vocals either. Like, not at all.

In fact I'm surprised to hear comparisons with Radiohead elsewhere. I'm just not hearing any similarities whatsoever

The way he draws out syllables on something like Trinidad is totally Thom Yorke. And coupled with a weird groove (in 13/4!) it sounds quite a bit like Radiohead tracks like Pyramid Song, even if that song is in 4/4.

vocals on the one song I heard reminded me of Rufus Wainwright

I'm going to need to check my copy to make sure I'm listening to the same album tbh

I agree he does sound like Rufus at times.

I'd sooner compare him to Beefheart, Tom Waits or David Berman (especially on the prior album) or one of those more eccentric/idiosyncratic types than someone who's got a classically "good" voice. Neil Young at a push perhaps.

I’m not referring to whether his voice is “classically good” but to phrasing

Not saying youse are wrong - I'm just hearing a very different thing, especially on this album... To me it's a raggedy twang; raw and bluesy (and dare I say slightly irritating in an eccentric way). He worked more in a baritone register on the 3D Country album, the phrasing was tighter. Here it sounds deliberately skittery, which isn't something I associate with Yorke/Wainright etc. Anyway, I'll drop it :-)

I think he sounds like a mix of Beck & Adam Sandler and I love it.

yeah, I hear you on Beck

apparently he’s saying “there’s a bomb in my car” not “there’s a bug in my car,” too bad

hah, i was wondering about that. i heard "bomb" the first time, "bug" the next. both situations have different but potentially similar ramifications

I just listened to track 1 and was hoping so much it was a bug in his car.

Should the mainstream rockcrit establishment have survived up to this point, Joe Levy or Rob Sheffield or David Browne or Alan Light woud've shown up in the Voice or RS or Spin with a thumbsucker re: how this band and their record compare to Sombr and his record, and what the confluence tells us about the attractive, privileged white youth of NYC, with references to Dimes Square, Little Red School House, Brooklyn Friends etc etc…

I do like the back half of this thing quite a bit! I would say that this Winter kid does split the difference between Yorke and Casablancas, even though that's an embarrassing low hanging fruit claim that each of the above would make and which would delight their editors.

We have that long Grayson Haver Currin profile in GQ linked above that makes reference to those Brooklyn schools and also noting-

During the last five years, since they signed a record deal at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, a few repeated narrative threads have converged for Geese. They are upper-middle-class New York kids who started a band in high school and were about to break up when Covid canceled their college plans. They are quiet, weird, and funny—or, as Bassin puts it with a smile, “All super fucking undiagnosed autistic, terrible hangs.” They are not to be confused with Goose, because one bird can only entertain you for so long.

Geese have managed their story so successfully, in part, because Winter can be so guarded in interviews. When asked something, he pauses for so long it’s tempting to interrupt the silence and ask something else. In our five hours of conversation, I spend at least thirty cumulative minutes waiting him out. (He and his mom think this stems from a concussion he got while playing hockey in eighth grade, though his dad insists it’s simply his nature.) When he answers, the response is very often a very good joke or even a lie, like a trap carefully set in chess. He has insisted he made Heavy Metal in various Guitar Center stores around New York (not true) and once told The New York Times that Geese employed a little elfin helper named Ezekiel (I have yet to meet him).

Also this 2021 NY Times article -

“It’s definitely music from New York and all of the movements from here,” Bassin said.

Hudson first discovered Television at age 12 when he was instructed to play a version of that band’s signature piece “Marquee Moon” in a class he was taking at the School of Rock program, where the bassist Dominic DiGesu was also studying. Several of the members have known each other since elementary school; others bonded at the progressive Little Red School House High School in Manhattan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/arts/music/geese-projector.html

Just no Sombr comparison

Goose + Geese + High Flying Birds could maybe do an arena tour.

They are upper-middle-class New York kids

lol tuition at brooklyn friends school is $62k/year, i guess if you're not a billionaire you can claim middle class in ny??

Sombr is more pop

Just once this century I'd like to see something like "raised outside of Findlay, Ohio by a single mother who worked as a nurse's assistant..." in the bio of a suddenly popular new indie artist

Adrienne Lenker?

Sorry, reading the GQ interview and howling with laughter at this Cameron Winter bloke. He might be a Bobby Gillespie-tier twat?

He tells me about trying to write novels when he was 11 and how he cares so little about how much money he might or might not be making he doesn’t even have the Chase app. He tears up while he plays me Nico’s “The Fairest of the Seasons,” guiding me through the chord changes and the tension of the strings as he streams it from his phone and saying that, at one point, its lyrics were “exactly my life.”

And yes, upper-middle-class? Give me a fucking break. This is the music of the 1%.

There's definitely a bunch of compositional complacency here. It's brilliantly produced and convincingly performed but the underlying songs don't have much going on imo and the whole thing is powered by a familiar mystique

I feel similar to imago. I listened to this (the first few tracks) a few days ago and thought it was sonically compelling, yet compositionally dull.

I like their last two albums enough. I'm an old cynical butthead, and I bought in. I believe them to be inspired.
They sound refreshing after wading through miles of pleasant, competent pop/rock looking for a new favorite to grab me.
Really appreciate the dynamic, uninhibited vocals. Vocal performance sort of carries the day for me.
I'm not sure they'll stick with me in the long run, but for now I dig and I crank it.

I also concur with everyone how depressing it is that indie music is increasingly a rich kid's game. I know the working class artists are out there, but the conditions are such that they cannot thrive.

i knew this sounded like rich kid rock zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

the title getting killed is funny to me for some reason.

interpol : joy division :: geese : the grifters?

really like the album a lot but i think i agree that the songs qua songs on the solo album are stronger overall. i do like mr. kenneth beats' production and the band interplay a lot, and there are a lot of moments that stick with me (beyond even the bomb bug in my car!!)

i looked at the wikipedia page for brooklyn friends school and the notable alumni does not suggest that it is a place populated by the children of the wealthy. the most esteemed people to have ever attended the school are like MCA from the beastie boys, the actor fisher stevens, a US rep for the virgin islands, wiki from ratking, and cameron winter. that's like... not at all notable for a high school in new york city, to state the obvious. it's sort of pathetic, really

close enough, welcome back Vampire Weekend discourse

“Getting Killed” is a hilarious title. Something oddly specific and yet so plain about it.

I thought it might be a reference to the line “We’re talking about getting killed!” from the show I Think You Should Leave. Seems like it might be in their wheelhouse.

Speaking of references, someone on Bluesky pointed out the similarity to The Boredoms Vision Creation Newsun cover.

Another one that might be a coincidence, but could just as easily be a direct homage.

someone bringing up sombr earlier is interesting because the nepo baby stuff has started up w/ him and i think what people want to expose as a hidden wellspring of economic privilege is really more of a cultural privilege possessed by children raised in new york. there's really strikingly little difference between the home environments in which cameron winter and MJ lenderman were raised (as reported by the same writer in the same publication) -- both have parents who are culturally literate ex-musicians who took normal jobs to settle down and raise families. the main difference is that lenderman's parents settled in north carolina (after his mom spent time in new york working at saks) whereas winter's parents stayed in new york. and i think with both artists you can detect how those locations shaped their music -- winter's influences are culturally diverse and pretentious whereas lenderman's are more straightforward and humble, and as such his music codes as digestibly middle class where winter's urbanity manifests in a way that is confrontational. but i would argue that, from what we can tell, there is very likely little economic difference between these families -- if anything lenderman's parents probably have more money by dint of living for decades in north carolina.

i think what is probably a more interesting discussion is the longterm economic story of america and why we may be in a period where indie rock musicians are typically coming from quite standard comfortable middle class backgrounds as opposed to broken homes in decaying rust belt cities

a hidden wellspring of economic privilege is really more of a cultural privilege possessed by children raised in new york

you can't be raised in new york unless your parents can afford to raise you in new york

62k a year for a k-12 school is wild man

like that is an unbelievable amount of money

more than twice the NYC average

close enough, welcome back Vampire Weekend discourse

― Murgatroid, Wednesday, 1 October 2025 17:48 (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

why not? there's your familiar mystique

I didn’t think that j0rdan was denying dude had economic privilege.

Economic and cultural privilege are non-identical but heavily overlapping categories obv.

They tend to be conflated because we tend to collapse (other people’s) culture and (other people’s) wealth into a single category of consumptive choices.

Incredibly excitingly, in 2 weeks we get the British version of this when The Last Dinner Party drop their 2nd album *cracks knuckles* *ignores sizeable glasshouse around self*

i saw geese open for vampire weekend in ohio this spring on the rich kid rock tour

it was dope Parris Hilton Dj'd the afters

i was angered by the thom yorke comparison at first but then i realized it’s undeniably otm. it wasn’t obvious to me ex ante that it was even possible to do american thom yorke since the british accent is such a big part of it. that’s innovation. also one of the guitars on ‘getting killed’ (the song) has a clean sound doing some jazzy chords sounds just like johnny greenwood, it’s basically ‘jigsaw falling out of place’

at least Vampire Weekend is fun to listen to

*leaves thread forever*

my point isn't to deny that cameron winter is of some level of economic privilege, it's just to say that i think the conversation is a red herring. for instance, nobody ever talks about rappers from new york as being of "economic privilege" because they're from new york and not, idk, memphis. but you can look at artists like azealia banks or asap rocky and very easily locate the ways in which the cultural privilege of growing up in the vicinity of downtown new york informed their music and careers and allowed them to maneuver into certain cultural spaces and up to certain levels of fame and notoriety that may not have been available to artists in other cities. nicki minaj is definitely not someone of economic privilege, however she did attend one of the most famous performing arts high schools in the city and is absolutely of new york cultural privilege. cameron winter's parents are probably more wealthy than xaviersobased's parents but the description below of xavier's upbringing is absolutely new york cultural privilege, and the broad narrative arcs of cameron winter and xavier's careers as artists in relation to the genres they operate in/around are not all that different. the fact that both grew up in new york feels far more relevant to me than the finances of their parents

Born and raised on the Upper West Side, Xavier is quicker to call his music “New York shit” than any of the various subgenres it’s been categorized under online. His family has been in the city since the 1970s, when his mom’s side emigrated from the Dominican Republic. Xavier and his older brother, Alexander, will be visiting later this year to walk her down the aisle when she weds her partner of 12 years, Indhira.

Xavier’s mom, Evelyn, began working as a house DJ in the 1980s, spinning smooth electronic blends of techno and popular rap for decades at parties throughout Manhattan. That meant there was production software on the family computer from the time Xavier could reach the mouse. Sitting around a table of fajitas on the Lower East Side with Indhira and Xavier, Evelyn pulls up a home movie on Facebook that depicts two of Xavier’s cousins leaning up against a table stacked with her decks, rapping into corded microphones.

i think people are just shitting on rich kids because it's fun. also, there are nepo babies in all genres and people absolutely point it out so i'm not sure what your point is

i think my point is pretty clear actually but i'm not sure what yours is. that your posts are stupid and meaningless? ok thanks...?

uh.

i looked at the wikipedia page for brooklyn friends school and the notable alumni does not suggest that it is a place populated by the children of the wealthy.

vs

my point isn't to deny that cameron winter is of some level of economic privilege,

it seems like you kind of are!

And yes, upper-middle-class? Give me a fucking break. This is the music of the 1%.

― Position Position

really, how so

it seems like you kind of are!

― a (waterface), Wednesday, October 1, 2025 4:25 PM (thirty-five seconds ago)

ok. go argue with a wall

J0rdan your point about NY privilege is good, but these are definitely rich kids come on

where did he saying they aren't rich?

say*

this is only somewhat germane to the convo but is def very funny: winter’s mom has been profiled by the nytimes in a culture piece focusing on polyamory

*her polyamory

the whole point of being a rich person who raises kids in manhattan/brooklyn is the hope that they will one day make a fabulous indie rock album. if you want to breed investment bankers you buy a house in connecticut

There's a hierarchy and many levels of access within new york cultural privilege that can open up depending on your circumstance. Does a white kid who goes to Brooklyn Friends have a better chance of making it than a black kid who auditions to get into LaGuardia? My guess is yes.

On the one hand lol but on the other hand yes exactly: it’s wasteful to live in NY and it’s wasteful to be an indie rock musician. We’re all obsessed with different forms of what we consider conspicuous consumption, to the point that unconsumed wealth makes our eyes glaze over even though it’s the real driver of plutocracy.

Xpost

I'm listening to 3D Country just now and there's bits of it that vocally remind me of Tim Buckley. Not saying his voice is in the same league but I think that influence is present.

surprised you guys care enough about this to type out all these posts tbh. i would gladly listen to a whimsical bookish indie pop ep written and performed by the kids in whit stillman’s metropolitan without a second thought

Same. This argument shocked me when it came up during the VW years.

I don't care and rarely check a musician's bio tbh, even for a review.

J0rdan your point about NY privilege is good, but these are definitely rich kids come on

― gargle my bloody beet diarrhea and asparagus piss (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, October 1, 2025 4:34 PM (fifteen minutes ago)

ok but what i'm asking is why this has mattered. like in real terms. budo jeru is like "we're all here to shit on rich kids because it's fun" ok cool i get it, i've been there before. if the conversation begins and ends with "if your parents are rich that's bad" then i don't know where we go from here. but why i'm picking at this is because no one has actually articulated how this privilege manifested itself in ways that put geese ahead of artists whose parents don't have as much money. because i read their origin story and it's identical to the way thousands of artists at every rung of the economic ladder have been discovered and signed to record deals in the last 5+ years

Maybe Willie Upbin did? In late March 2020, Upbin was about to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania and take a job as an A&R scout at Atlantic Records. He was a collegiate fencer who had played music and loved the idea of the industry. He stumbled upon Geese’s Soundcloud page and was blown away. He sent the record to an attorney who said they could get a deal immediately.

Upbin shot Geese an Instagram message and told them he wanted to work together. They had a conference call. Upbin told them he’d been sending Projector to labels and that places like Sub Pop were already interested. “They were so naïve,” says Upbin. “They were kids who said, ‘This is sick.’”

On April 13, 2020, Upbin and Geese held a Zoom meeting with Terrible Records. It was Bassin’s 18th birthday. His mom, Annie, took notes during the call. Sub Pop followed, as did 4AD. They had, Upbin remembers, played maybe five shows.

i don't bring this all up to defend geese specifically, i've not listened to a note of their music or of cameron winter's solo stuff. when people start bringing up tom waits and thom yorke and shit... not my bag. but why i'm pushing back is because i just find the conversation to be distracting in an era where technology has done a lot of leveling of the playing field when it comes to creating music and building an audience for that music. what did cameron winter's parents money afford him, musically? gear to mess around with? the soundcloud algorithm is not able to be leveraged by wealth

i found sombr to be an interesting invocation because he is someone who also grew up economically privileged in manhattan, and as people have become more aware of him they have started to throw around the nepo baby stuff. but sombr signed a midsized six figure record deal w/ a major label after going viral on tiktok from his bedroom in what is currently an extremely ordinary way. you could accurately describe him as the julian casablancas of the tiktok era, but the reason why the connection to money was relevant to the strokes is because in 2000 being in new york may still have really mattered when it came to accruing the kind of notoriety that make rock bands successful. but sombr or cameron winter could have grown up in oklahoma and still had more or less the same chance of having their music discovered thru the internet in the fashion that it was. what living in new york via their parents money afforded them is a different and more ineffable kind of privilege that exists culturally much more than it does economically. and this to me is a more interesting topic of discussion than attempting to divine the exact nature of cameron winter's parents wealth

technology has only leveled the playing ground so much. sure, anyone can win the gamble of going viral, but the odds are still stacked against them. you know what evens the odds? money. which, as we all know, is fungible with time. people who have to work for a living have less and less of either.

none of my bitterness is intended as shade on winter or this band, who I think are just fine

my takeaway from all this that america has quaker prep schools? that's wild

you know what evens the odds? money. which, as we all know, is fungible with time. people who have to work for a living have less and less of either.

we are talking about kids who were in high school?

I'm sorry, I forgot that all teenagers have equal levels of economic privilege, my bad

i heard this once a while back, that as an artist you need 2 of the following 3 things to be successful: talent, resources (money), people/connections. the more of any of them the more likely you're going to be on a magazine cover or whatever. but if you only have one forget about it.

Yeah and who knows what Cameron winters connections did or didn’t do but it seems like he’s got all three, which is fine but to ignore his background is obtuse. Kid seems talented, and I dig some of his music! No one has articulated what difference it made because none of us know, we are just pointing it out and the pushback seems a little extreme at this point

the economic thing is less of an issue for me these days then... well, then youth to be honest. that "still figuring things out" thing. especially with artists who want to project a kind of above-it-call cool. like, i'm going to be artistically interesting and commanding and i'm 24 or whatever. no idea if geese are like this, maybe they're older, like j0rdan they aren't my bag either. just a broader thing for me with pop music, generally speaking. i like older musicians because i am older.

this is maybe spiralling too off topic but I feel that as I get older too, and I'm hardly "old." the thing is that younger artists by their nature can tap more into the "beginner's mind" thing. that allows them to find a fresh angle on things we've all heard before. whereas an older artist will potentially have more interesting things to express, but is more liable to be stuck in a creative rut or dead end. obviously there are exceptions

I think that's a largely realistic generalisation. Sometimes the more you know the less susceptible to broad strokes and wild experimentation you can be. You'd think it would be the opposite: The more experience you have, the bigger your box of paints. But experience also has a habit of creating habits, of making you more risk-avoidant, and of orienteering you down the paths of least resistance

we are just pointing it out and the pushback seems a little extreme at this point

Nah come on, there are people coming into this thread and making out this album people are discussing and enjoying is trash based solely on dude's upbringing. No wonder that's going to get challenged

They are so rich they have a song about tax avoidance

And getting killed

I want to make doubly clear that I don't mean to trash this album or artist! Like I said, I think it's fine, but I will also admit that when I find out that a successful young artist comes from a fairly privileged background, something in me just...seethes.

to end this post on a positive note, I will concur that Getting Killed is a good/funny title.

personally speaking i'm still kinda jealous of kids who get the artistically rich experience of a new york upbringing. maybe there's some of that emotion in the background here.

see getting killed is too "we are cool" for me. i get that's part of the job description here though. just goes back to "not my bag".

As far as NY based nepo-indie goes it’s a minor masterpiece, I’ve been enjoying the new record a bunch

what do you like most about it?

The production is great as mentioned by others. I’m really a fan of the vocal performance here as well even with lyrics that are maybe are a little flimsy.

gotcha thanks

what did cameron winter's parents money afford him, musically? gear to mess around with?

I think zchyrs already made this point, but...I think this is the wrong question. The issue is not what his privilege afforded him musically. What it likely afforded him is more valuable: the freedom to never need to fill out a job application, and all the time in the world to do whatever he wants

And Getting Killed is indeed a good / funny title

who is trashing the album? i came into the discussion a fan on the strength of last year's album and all i said was i was disappointed by the songwriting (or lack thereof)

at least i've actually listened to the fucking album i mean sheesh

see getting killed is too "we are cool" for me. i get that's part of the job description here though. just goes back to "not my bag".

― she freaks, she speaks (map), Wednesday, October 1, 2025 5:21 PM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i agree with this btw. a thing about the previous album i liked was the abstraction, lyrically and in terms of presentation overall. what is a "3D country"? i don't know. they struck me as maybe proggy dorks with a zany sense of humor. but i didn't get any sense of the personalities of the artists, which i think is a strength for this band the more i learn about them

OTM. I had no idea listening to 3D Country who these people were meant to be. Didn't realise they were from NY either. I imagined them as some sort of Texan experimental cabaret act, like a modern Southern US version of Deaf School or something

Totally! I had a couple of tracks from that last album on some playlist and thought kinda similarly. It was only until hearing the first single in this thread that I looked them up.

My guess is this is their down-home Exile On Main Street record. The next one will be all spacey and epic

it's a decent album that's been a bit overhyped but i think they probably have one that does live up to that hype in them

which one of their parents paid for the right to bite the cover of vision creation newsun?

which one of their parents paid for the right to bite the cover of vision creation newsun?

J0rdan your point about NY privilege is good, but these are definitely rich kids come on

― gargle my bloody beet diarrhea and asparagus piss (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, October 1, 2025 4:34 PM (fifteen minutes ago)

ok but what i'm asking is why this has mattered. like in real terms.

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, October 1, 2025 5:24 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Because they are using their privilege to make the most boring-ass nothing-ass warmed-over-Parquet-Courts-warming-over-Television music for empty-headed zoom-zooms and takes attention away from actual hard-working bands, something that is harder and harder to be in this economy

ok grandpa let’s get you to bed

i need a zoom zoom to tuck me in tbh

i think what is probably a more interesting discussion is the longterm economic story of america and why we may be in a period where indie rock musicians are typically coming from quite standard comfortable middle class backgrounds as opposed to broken homes in decaying rust belt cities

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.),

Yes, interested in this

and so we did not need those rockcrit oldsters from the legacy media to explain what Geese and Sombe tell us about attractive affluent youngs in contemporary NYC! We have a Gawker dude to do just that!

I think it is fair to sat that until the 90s, popular music in the U.S. and the UK emanated from the working class in the 40s-60s, joined by the middle class in the 70s and 80s. It was not until the late 80s/early 90s that it was acceptable for the well heeled to get involved in, for instance, indie rock. It's very easy to excoriate others for signing to major labels and making all number of commercially-minded decisions to when you have had the benefit of a safety net your entire life.

i think what is probably a more interesting discussion is the longterm economic story of america and why we may be in a period where indie rock musicians are typically coming from quite standard comfortable middle class backgrounds as opposed to broken homes in decaying rust belt cities

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.)

gonna sound like a dumbass here but i honestly had no idea that there was ever a shift to the latter "rust belt" indie you describe, it seems like the standard line has always been the former "comfortable" folks in cities with cultural capital like NY etc

neil young's from canada iirc

there have always been indie and punk bands from more middle class backgrounds and it's always been a mix. not sure how you would gauge how or to what degree that has shifted over time, seems like a lot of moving parts. it seems to me that genuinely poor background bands and artists tend to not want to make that their identity while bands and artists that come from a little more cush can be more strident about their outsider status but it's maybe foolish to make that generalization.

i could see that being the result of an economic shift from the label's role in subsidizing the artist to the artist having to carry that load more

i'm interested in the idea of cultural privilege is there a thread for that? is that where your parents play you television and the ramones or where your grandpa taught you to play guitar?

i think it makes more sense just to look at wealth polarization at large across the population. when people say 62k a year for a private school is an obscene amount of money they're right and it's telling you something. i get how it doesn't make sense to flatten cultural nuance with 'omg wealthy' but at the same time the actual numbers themselves have become obscene. and who is to blame? no one of course. "the system" "capitalism" whatever diseased organism directs our destiny as a population regardless of individual feelings choices or morality.

but sombr or cameron winter could have grown up in oklahoma and still had more or less the same chance of having their music discovered thru the internet in the fashion that it was.

i don't think this is true at all. we have a recent example actually, that pig-rock band from oklahoma that was hyped last year i think? can't remember their names. i have a feeling the odds are pretty stacked against them as far as longevity goes. what are they gonna do after the internet / algorithms move on and leave em back where they are in oklahoma? it used to be that bands from places like that could tour every year, record, make a name for themselves and have a decent shot at keeping it going in the indie ecosystem. all of that has blown apart pretty much. i mean i think i'm at least somewhat wrong here, bands still stick to it and tour and make it work somehow. but it's harder than it used to. because the wealth is obscene and it's held among an obscenely small number of people. and everyone else, and this still very much spreads out geographically regardless of the internet, has to give up any hope for security because of its increasingly cancerous demands.

the school of rock stuff is an interesting new element. i have friends that put their kids in those and they are stupidly expensive. imagine having access to that as a kid tho. they put you on stage at these decent midsize clubs (the black cat of instance in DC)! i def never had anything close to that stuff as a kid. it took me until college to meet someone who played drums

pig-rock band

err pig-fuck rock band i mean. chat pile.

and it looks like they have a couple of shows on the west coast in october. so remains to be seen etc. i have no horse in this race as i didn't really care for the album much.

mazda drivers catching strays

but sombr or cameron winter could have grown up in oklahoma and still had more or less the same chance of having their music discovered thru the internet in the fashion that it was.

the fact that this claim is narrower than i was reading it is telling actually - it seems like you were trying to support your larger point that somehow the internet has made cultural and actual capital less relevant, and you had to snip off a lot from this hypothetical. (and let's be clear, most of what we're talking about is actual capital even if it doesn't look like it within the rarefied ranks of new york culture.)

A person I went to school with in the midwest had his parents buy and rent out an apartment in Brooklyn just so they could claim their band is from Brooklyn. Geese actually growing up in NYC is refreshingly pure.

my only cultural capital was an older brother who recorded episodes of 120 minutes on vhs

I literally have no idea when the discussion around Which Particular Artist is going to start to concern itself with "their family wealth". With consistency, the most extreme examples of 'inherited American family wealth' in the music industry continue to escape examination while 'some kid who didn't have to pay for his post-secondary education' will become a target. Added to this, brilliant music-making colleagues of mine who literally grew up in trailer-park single-parent families and continue to require side-hustles to survive, they don't get any bonuses from these discussions.

As somebody who is acutely aware of "who has the dough" amongst the people I've worked with, I can assure everyone that there is zero actual correlation between these discussions and the actual facts of who is among the 1% in the creative roles. Furthermore, I myself have the opinion that there is no better place for the children of the 1% than in creative roles, better that they're footing the bill for some studio sessions than pouring that money into world-destroying investments.

gee, it's not a very high bar is it

there's a special place in heaven for animal lovers, that's what i always say

Because they are using their privilege to make the most boring-ass nothing-ass warmed-over-Parquet-Courts-warming-over-Television music for empty-headed zoom-zooms and takes attention away from actual hard-working bands, something that is harder and harder to be in this economy

― gargle my bloody beet diarrhea and asparagus piss (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, October 1, 2025 8:09 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lmao empty headed zoom-zooms is an instant classic

the economic thing is less of an issue for me these days then... well, then youth to be honest. that "still figuring things out" thing. especially with artists who want to project a kind of above-it-call cool. like, i'm going to be artistically interesting and commanding and i'm 24 or whatever. no idea if geese are like this, maybe they're older, like j0rdan they aren't my bag either. just a broader thing for me with pop music, generally speaking. i like older musicians because i am older.

― she freaks, she speaks (map), Wednesday, October 1, 2025 5:59 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i had no idea they were young until reading this post. listening to the album i was fully thinking it was made by 35 year-olds

lol, thought this an ILE thread, wasn't expecting class discourse here.

I feel like it's probably absolutely true that the ecosystem surrounding indie has corroded, and the class background of the participants has changed accordingly. We would probably know a lot more about it, if the economics of cultural criticism hadn't collapsed at the same time.

I don't think Chat Pile is a very good example, though. They belong more to a metal ecosystem, and that seems in better shape. They will be ok, even though they are from Oklahoma. Come to think about it, indie has moved away from the big cities a bit lately, with several of the biggest hypes coming from Asheville. Or Waxahatchee Creek.

I love it when Wikipedia biographies of, say, Leonard Cohen go "At first he was going to be a poet, but there wasn't enough money in it so he decided to turn to music".. . It implies there was a time when 1. Being a poet was a potentially livable trade 2. Making music could be lucrative even right at the start.

With regard to the latter, forming a band in the first place is expensive. Instruments and their upkeep is expensive. Hiring practice space is expensive (unless you're lucky enough to have access to a big room away from neighbours). And as rock/indie/whatever is hardly burgeoning right now, even if you're really talented it's unlikely you're going to be raking it in anywhere close to the start. This is Geese's fourth album, and it's the first one as far as I know which has garnered even more than a rough speck of attention.

Obviously it didn't used to be like this. The music industry could throw a bunch of cash at XTC, a non-touring band with a medium-sized following, so they could make their silly Dukes Of The Stratosphere side project. And in the 90s you only had to sound vaguely like Stone Temple or Shed Seven and you'd have a good chance of getting snapped up by a label and sell a good wodge of the one half-decent song you wrote.

i could see that being the result of an economic shift from the label's role in subsidizing the artist to the artist having to carry that load more

― Tallahassee Coates (Heez), Wednesday, October 1, 2025 10:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Hadn't considered this, but I do think this is a big part of it

well, consider how in the Good Old Days the bands had to pay for their own videos

yeah, even bigger labels won't throw money to anyone other than huge-selling artists. indie labels don't "sign" people either, they just release the music and if there are royalties, the artist might get some.

Furthermore, I myself have the opinion that there is no better place for the children of the 1% than in creative roles, better that they're footing the bill for some studio sessions than pouring that money into world-destroying investments.

otm

3 albums in 5 years
less than a million followers on Spotify
most people, who have taken a listen, have said no thanks.

so many words and so much passion...
over an insignificant band
over who their parents are?!
are people trying to say they couldn't have achieved such modest success
after 5 years of plugging away, without their parents or NYC?

lol what, they are getting insane levels of gas, levels most bands could only ever vaguely dream of

xp uhhh...

joining the Geese train. new record is a very exciting listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw91e6Nurfc

Kimmel crowd not too impressed

Sorry but nearly every line of your poem is inscrutable.

3 albums in 5 years is... normal?
less than a million follower on Spotify is... still quite a lot for an emerging alternative rock band in 2025?
most people, who have taken a listen, have said no thanks... did you poll them, or?
so many words and so much passion... welcome to ILM
over an insignificant band see above
over who their parents are?! it's easily the least interesting thing about the music, but it does open a wider conversation about who can be successful these days compared to, say, new york in the 60s or the 80s
are people trying to say they couldn't have achieved such modest success after 5 years of plugging away, without their parents or NYC? people are saying it likely helped, as does privilege in pretty much every facet of society and culture today

Fwiw I heard a lot more buzz about that Cameron Winter solo album (or maybe I just ignored any mention of Geese bc I thought it was a jam band). And while it's not quite my thing, his voice is more interesting a weird spare acoustic context than in a rock band.

(also the Thom Yorke thing what first came to mind when I heard it, and Rufus Wainwright)

"most people, who have taken a listen, have said no thanks... did you poll them, or?"

sorry, I thought this was the thread for sweeping generalities.
Last two albums got a lot of critical attention. I just assumed it would
have prompted a lot of music lovers and nerds to at least check them out.
also plenty of response right has been negative.

*right here

I think this the camp is fairly split:

- "I'm glad there's an actual indie rock band providing a good, imaginative take on the genre in 2025"
- "This is overhyped trustafarian trash"

every 20 years, we Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away

maybe I just ignored any mention of Geese bc I thought it was a jam band)

ya a lot of people have confused them with the band goose. which is a gen z jam band.

it's funny to imagine if radiohead released the bends and everyone confused them for a ska band named radioface or something

Oh, wait, so Geese didn't do the 30 min Vampire Weekend medley...

poll

I'm just ignorant as to what being big or successful is nowadays. Their level of success just doesn't seem like overhyped excess to me. I did love that first CYHSY album. How well off were their parents?

this band is Cave Your Nick and Say Yorke

Every generation throws a heir up the pitchforks

I'm not going to reread the whole thread, but I think "parents" is a bit of a red herring? I thought the earlier posts were more about economic-or-cultural privilege and financial stability / being able to afford hobbies instead of working. Obvs their parents are key to that but I don't think who their parents are is that important; it was already mentioned that the singer (?) went to a private $62k/yr high school

who do you think paid that tuition?

I just think it's strange to boil down the earlier discussion to:

so many words and so much passion...
over an insignificant band
over who their parents are?!

maybe I'm misreading though

Only meant that as the discussion related directly to the band. I understand the broader context of the benefits and the inequity of privilege. It just seemed like some people were using that to discredit the band mostly for that upbringing. They should not be shamed solely for their good fortune of a head start in life. They can still have a genuine love of music, a passion to perform it, a talent for it, and a work ethic to develop that talent.

I'm suddenly hearing about this band from every corner of everywhere. The Best Band Ever hyperbole is nuts, reminds me of early 2000 ott NYC hype.

I don't get that as they seem like acquired taste. I probably wouldn't have known about them until now if I hadn't seen them live.

I was out for a drink with a friend Tuesday night, and Geese came up in conversation, with the assumption that I've heard them (I haven't yet) and like them (tbd).

Actually listening to this now, I like how all the drums are completely crushed and have no dynamics (a very hip-hop approach), so the verses just have textural changes and/or simply mix them down.

Never got into the Strokes and actively despised Vampire Weekend (they always sounded "try hard" and "wannabe", vying for something that was never attainable, and actively duping their audience into thinking they had it). So, is this is another take on that general band aesthetic? I'll give this a go, but it does feel like this thread is a more high distilled class conscious "authenticity debate" than either prior band. I suppose these times make that distinction ever more so sensitive.

But ultimately for me it boils down to this: is the music good? I only heard Taxes and it wasn't bad.

jim morrison's dad was an admiral. gram parsons came from serious florida orange grove money. david crosby was a silver spoon, michael nesmith's mom invented White Out, lady gaga's dad owns restaurants, lana del rey is whoever she is, trey anastasio's dad was an Educational Testing Services executive, arcade fire, vampire weekend, and many many many et ceteras

networking savvy is way more important than instrumental mastery. punk won

we gotta keep people down so they can keep bringing us good indie rock music

william burroughs lived off burroughs corporation money

Bryan Ferry was a slave to love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9STHqt_vsCc

not jim morrison and trey anastasio and arcade fire!!!!

Unsurprisingly these discussions tend to collapse a lot of overlapping but conceptually distinct propositions, which results in people talking past one another:

1. Is the music good?
2. Do the artists come from economic privilege?
3. If the answer to (2) is "yes", has that privilege facilitated the music's existence and relative level of success?
4. If the answer to (2) is "yes", has that privilege helped in some way to shape the sound of the music?
5. If the answer to (4) is "yes", can we identify where, how and why with confidence and precision?
6. If the answer to any of (2), (3) or (4) is "yes", can that potentially render the music inauthentic?
7. If the answer to (6) is "yes", has it done so in this case?
8. If the answer to any of (2), (3), or (4) is yes, am I entitled to ignore this music on that basis?

For me, the answers to those questions are:

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Almost certainly
4. Almost certainly
5. Notionally yes, but this is trickier than most people think and they normally fuck up their attempts to do so
6. N/A (meaningless question)
7. See (6)
8. Do what feels right for you

posting this for whiney. geese's dad makes production music.

https://i.discogs.com/Wt-cUc5YIUrD3pHsTMUt_AnWWlB5xLb4Hz08Bxri9tk/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTI5MzA2/ODQyLTE3MTQ5NzE5/MzEtNzM2MC5wbmc.jpeg

https://i.discogs.com/7-7kEABhassMIenQ3D-zJVZtwgmUHPdUyIV-c4c9K7o/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTI5MzA2/ODQyLTE3MTQ5NzE2/OTEtMjk2OS5wbmc.jpeg

https://i.discogs.com/Nd8VxCwTqHvuss0CeJS1OCs0zDUxLTVu0lNKV24JX74/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTI5MzA2/ODQyLTE3MTQ5NzE2/OTMtOTIzNi5wbmc.jpeg

https://i.discogs.com/k9szuTmmykrU9lAz6NfVhvK4VT95L-Z7YW8rsUROQzU/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTI5MzA2/ODQyLTE3MTQ5NzE3/MDgtMzQ1MC5wbmc.jpeg

https://www.discogs.com/artist/923917-Stewart-Winter?superFilter=Credits

https://www.videohelper.com/artists/profile/staff/stewart-winter

geese up hos down

Never got into the Strokes and actively despised Vampire Weekend (they always sounded "try hard" and "wannabe", vying for something that was never attainable, and actively duping their audience into thinking they had it). So, is this is another take on that general band aesthetic? I'll give this a go, but it does feel like this thread is a more high distilled class conscious "authenticity debate" than either prior band. I suppose these times make that distinction ever more so sensitive.

But ultimately for me it boils down to this: is the music good? I only heard Taxes and it wasn't bad.

i don't think this album really has much at all to do with the strokes or vampire weekend stylistically (who also don't have that much in common beyond there being attached class discourse), except that the singer sounds a bit like casablancas. the music is good but doesn't live up to the out of control hype.

listened, was way different than i thought it would. was kind of appealing ramshackle in a lot of places, almost like a indie skip spence or something? liked the percussion a lot. definitely didn't feel nailed down tight like the strokes or vampire weekend.

could the dude's voice/singing style ultimately wear on me? possibly.

skip spence is a good comp that i haven’t seen elsewhere

yep I can hear that too

overall, i got as many or more early late 60s early 70ish vibes as I did 00s indie which was a surprise

Same.

I also get a bit of a "James Chance and the Contortions played at 33 rather than 45" vibe as well.

https://www.reddit.com/r/geesebandofficial/s/9Mw2k88RGd

i actually don't think they're overhyped at all, it's just very good imo

overall, i got as many or more early late 60s early 70ish vibes

that's why I hate them almost as much as Father John Misty

The Swans namedrop in the GQ piece and the King of Limbs (my favorite Radiohead album by some distance) namedrop here has got me listening. What a pity that the lyric in the first song *isn't* "there's a bug in my car"! Serious missed opportunity there.

Yep it would be a much better lyric

After one listen, I'm in the "check back in with this writer in 5 years" camp. It feels dark and serious in a mannered way, and like someone in the band, or a producer, is always thinking, "What will people think of this when they hear it?" I'd like to hear what will happen if, instead, down the line, Cameron Winter stops giving any fucks whatsoever and makes his own Tropical Dandy.

Once again I am urging people to check out 3D Country, which by comparison is a lot tighter and more immediate. Maybe why this one hasn't clicked for me is because I was hoping for something more satisfyingly bold and playful. Winter's voice is deeper and less grating too - a deep and confident baritone as opposed to the creaky Jaggerish bowl on this one.

I still can't hear any Radiohead or Thom Yorke similarities here, but The King Of Limbs comparison is likely apt. I find both albums frustratingly unsatisfying in their impressionism and ephemerality. Both albums sound like they're made of tinder. A thicket of dried twigs with little to hang a song on or propulse it, rather a sound for the vocalist to skitter around in a semi-improvised fashion.

I just find that sort of twiggy, insubstantial sound and production hard to cope with, and I say that as a fan of both Geese and Radiohead. With Getting Killed and TKOL there's no oomph, no drive, little to latch on to for me. It's an unsatisfying experience for me

*bowl = yowl

But i also think the word "overrated" is unhelpful in this context. My impression is that 3D Country reached a lot of critics' ears too late for them to get their flowers, so there's a wellspring of enthusiasm for this one to make up for it

idk i listened to 3d country and it’s fun but imo much weaker. he was still experimenting with the voice hadn’t figured it out yet, just cycling through impressions of different rock singer styles. and the band are doing too much goofy stop start mathy wanking instead of locking in

LIKE A SAILOR IN A BIG GREEN BOAT

LIKE A SAILOR IN A BIG GREEN COAT

Xp see, that's the absolute inverse of how I feel about the two albums. New one is skittery, the production is thin, his voice is one-note and grating, and the compositions are a mess. 3D Country, to me, sounds solid, chunky and like they know what they're doing

If it's true that he's done experimenting with different vocal styles, I'd say it's a shame he's settled on this high, wavering creak where the notes are held way longer than they ought to (and he seems to be able to manage).

I'm also surprised that a hip hop producer should be so averse to low-end in his mix. I'm really not into rock that sounds like it was played on a cutlery tray. Reminds me of the GAPDY years

just like every other single new album that causes a multi-hundred-post thread on ilx, this album is fine

No! You must have an opinion!

My opinion: it exists. (For I have not heard it, therefore my opinion is based on available fact.)

But i also think the word "overrated" is unhelpful in this context.

it's generally not a helpful term or discussion ever, but especially in stuff like this where you could stop 100 people randomly on the street and ask if they've heard Geese and they would just stare at you like wtf are you talking about?

honk if you've heard geese

i recently played a show with a band called the Gooses, a dude from a local punk band on acoustic and his 9 year old son on Casio keyboard, they did funny songs about poop and cats and stuff, pretty awesome

stuff like this where you could stop 100 people randomly on the street and ask if they've heard Geese and they would just stare at you like wtf are you talking about?

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, October 3, 2025 1:25 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the funny thing is I bet this would also be true if you replaced Geese with Aphex Twin, Pavement, or The RZA. A good reminder that we all live in a bubble that can seem a lot larger than it actually is

absolutely

honk if you've heard geese

― imago, Friday, October 3, 2025 1:41 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

actually an excellent bumper sticker merch idea for them

i liked a geese video on TitTok so now my FYP has a bunch a young people that are vibing it

i recently played a show with a band called the Gooses, a dude from a local punk band on acoustic and his 9 year old son on Casio keyboard, they did funny songs about poop and cats and stuff, pretty awesome

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, October 3, 2025 1:53 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

OK fine they can have a P4K BNM too however the best I can do is an 8.2. Hope that works

haha thank you i'll pass it along

Finally gave this a listen, sounds good, I could imagine it being better live. Reminds me of ... Dirty Projectors or something? Singer can be a bit much. Like all the percussion. Jammier than I expected, given the distinction people have been making between this and Goose (who I assume must therefore sound really jammy).

the funny thing is I bet this would also be true if you replaced Geese with Aphex Twin, Pavement, or The RZA. A good reminder that we all live in a bubble that can seem a lot larger than it actually is

I don't know, Aphex Twin might have eclipsed this. I was reading the Disco Pogo book on him in public (on the train, at the gym, etc) and quite a few people commented on it. Certainly more than I expected. I'm sure Pavement is far more obscure now than they were even at the turn of the millennium when they played the first Coachella

has anyone mentioned red red meat/califone? similar clattery percussiveness. music is ok and it times good, the singer is going to be black licorice for a lot of people.

I don't think the band itself sounds particularly like either of those bands, but yeah, that sort of chaotic percussion element rings a bell.

It is shocking to me just how much he sounds like Thom Yorke on the new album, I never got that on Heavy Metal. But like, Thom Yorke on T

― We're sad to see you. Go! (flamboyant goon tie included), Monday, September 29, 2025 8:52 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah he sounds so much like Thom here that I cannot help but hear the album as a roundabout King of Limbs tribute

― Tim F, Monday, September 29, 2025 8:56 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm, this is basically american southern rock late radiohead, and it's amazing

Pavement went viral on TikTok a couple of times recently, I think more young people know them than we might think.

someone mentioned his name earlier, and I found the reference pretty puzzling, but now listening again, “half real” kind of really is an adam sandler song. but a very nice one!

Am I the only person hearing Ween in this? Without doing a deep Goose dive, it sounds like they're fucking with rock signifiers in a similar way, and it's tricky to know wether they're for real or not. Like what if Ween grew up later, feeding on more modern sounds instead of Pink Floyd and the Residents.

Maybe there's some Ariel Pink but Geese feels more expansive than that.

no i def heard a lot of ween in 3d country, less so in the new one

Such a surprise to hear an indie rock album this good in 2025.

needlessly cruel to Hamilton Leithauser

Such a surprise to hear an indie rock album this good in 2025.

― treeship 2, Monday, 6 October 2025 01:59 (thirteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

You didn't check that Water From Your Eyes out then

In that GQ article Winter also mentioned Van Morrison Astral Weeks, Television and many more, so I think their influences go beyond just Thom Yorke and Radiohead.

Van Morrison was the first thing I thought of when I heard this

lots of van sounds on his solo album too

Unless I'm reading the charts wrong, Getting Killed didn't even crack the Top 200 on the Billboard album charts.

the prophecy came true!

btw free money to anyone who can do a cam'ron winter/goose set mashup album

no i def heard a lot of ween in 3d country, less so in the new one

― harper valley paul thomas anderson (voodoo chili), Sunday, October 5, 2025 7:50 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

^^ cf. "i see myself"

i think the thing i miss most on "getting killed" is the background singers. they really, uh, tied things together on "3d"

In that GQ article Winter also mentioned Van Morrison Astral Weeks, Television and many more, so I think their influences go beyond just Thom Yorke and Radiohead.

― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 7 October 2025 04:49 (fifteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Great live cover of Marquee Moon here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLrztT8kED0

i think the thing i miss most on "getting killed" is the background singers. they really, uh, tied things together on "3d"

It's that "pop" element I like and miss from this new one. I've listened to Getting Killed several times over the last few weeks and other than Taxes, which I heard before, I can't remember a single song or hook. It just kind of "happens", then it's gone. 3D Country was like David Berman fronting Steely Dan with a tendency for the occasioanl self-sabotaging freakout. This one sounds like Mick Jagger fronting Grizzly Bear with an aversion to catchiness

Billboard was not updated until now. Getting Killed actually debuted at number 96, ninety six! Which means it really isn't that big or that hyped after all.

Idk, isn't that pretty huge for an indie rock album in 2025?

was trying to think of other indie rock band releases in 2025 that i've listened to and can't come up with much

I don't look that often but I feel most are in the Top 50.

Wet Leg, from this year, debut at 45 for example.

I don't look that often but I feel most are in the Top 50.

― music for empty-headed zoom-zooms (Bee OK), Tuesday, October 7, 2025 1:54 PM (sixteen minutes ago)

definitely not true. the first five words you typed here are a clue

I'm not surprised that Wet Leg is bigger than Geese. Neither of those positions seem that high for each band compared to their hype.

But i also think the word "overrated" is unhelpful in this context.

it's generally not a helpful term or discussion ever, but especially in stuff like this where you could stop 100 people randomly on the street and ask if they've heard Geese and they would just stare at you like wtf are you talking about?

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, October 3, 2025 12:25 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

what was the breakout indie band before Wet Leg? cant recall.

i'm down with the Geese, Cajun Man Headrest

Bon Iver Sable, Fable from early this year debut at number 11.

also a record I've heard no one talk about since the week it was released

it didn't cut the mustard

I will say, these guys have sent me on a Radiohead and The Smile kick. Been a spell since I had one of those.

Maybe this is a regional thing, but outside of ILM and a brief conversation with my barber, who's up with his music knowledge, I've not heard a soul mention Geese

sit at the bench at a park with a pond for a while. it'll come up.

*BUZZER NOISE*

after listening to this album a bit, i still think it's pretty good but i've realized that like 85% of what i like about it is winters' singing. these songs would be a lot more boring with a different singer. sometimes he makes me think of hamilton leithauser of the walkmen, they have different vocal qualities but both have big expressive voices that swoop up and down

watching a few live clips and then listening to the album again, i realized that a lot of the songs are kinda blues-rock? it's a lot more noticeable in the live footage. i also keep thinking about tom waits - they don't sound like tom waits at all, but just a distinctive voice over fragmented blues guitar and bass and rattly percussion/drums.

yeah this is as blues-rock as it gets really, with superficially waits-ian idiosyncracies sprinkled throughout

If you want me to pay my taxes
If you want me to pay my taxes
You better come over with a crucifix
You're gonna have to nail me down

Salem Country

This band reminds me a bit of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, another hipster NYC band of yesteryear, repurposing traditional forms. The singer sounds nothing like Jon Spencer, with his campy Elvis tics, but there is a similar bravado to his persona, and also possibly a similar hip-hop influence on the drum sound, as noted above. Also the busy-ness reminds me of early Roxy Music. Again the singer sounds nothing like Bryan Ferry, but there is a similar willingness to push his voice beyond reasonable limits.

Yeah i can hear that. And I'd go so far as to say there are lots of similarities between his and Jon Spencer's voice

Thus album is really good. I'm not playing often and just sort of absorbing it when I do. Every time I play it just a bit better. I still like the last album more but I can actually see that changing in the future.

im finding myself lopping off "trinidad" and the last two tracks to make this perfect, "au pays du cocaine" really should be the closer too imo

scratch that, i have let "long island city here i come" back into my life

only one i skip is the opener

They played here last night (and are playing again tonight; both very sold out). Paraphrased report from an Actual Teenager who went (with his parents): "Their recent work doesn't translate that well to live performances because it has a lot of back up vocals and other production that they don't make any attempt to reproduce. They're solid performers, seem really young and not sure why they are industry favorites."

I just noticed that the guitar player was a women so I looked it up. Emily Green transition recently and missed that until now.

Baby, you can stay with me and nobody would care:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGE-JRsJ2uo

xp interesting, i would have thought the 3d country songs would be more difficult to translate live. clips i saw from last nights show looked great

Au Pays Du might be my favorite tune on the album. I’ve heard it said the song is about the relationship between Cameron and his polyamorous mother when he was a young child. The music video definitely doesn’t dispute that. Heartbreakingly beautiful song.

flopson - right? the new stuff sounds a lot more raw and "live" than the 3D Country stuff which is back-ups galore

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6EJxjdRPAw

They played here last night (and are playing again tonight; both very sold out). Paraphrased report from an Actual Teenager who went (with his parents): "Their recent work doesn't translate that well to live performances because it has a lot of back up vocals and other production that they don't make any attempt to reproduce. They're solid performers, seem really young and not sure why they are industry favorites."

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, October 16, 2025 6:45 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

cameron winter also has two solo shows at the rockefeller chapel at u of c in december, which seems preferable to me to seeing geese at a bigger venue, but they are also very very sold out (stubhub has a couple of tix for like $300)

the clips I’ve seen of those chapel shows are amazing

i saw a kranky records anniversary show at rockefeller chapel a few years ago that was amazing, they had a sick light/laser show on the walls
also saw ellen arkbro perform an organ piece at different u of c chapel last year - i think it was supposed to be at rockefeller but got moved

I saw Low there, and it ruled.

The hype is really insane, tickets on the second hand market are going for 4-figures at some venues.

Impressive, now I want to hear the full song.

i don't bring this all up to defend geese specifically, i've not listened to a note of their music or of cameron winter's solo stuff. when people start bringing up tom waits and thom yorke and shit... not my bag.

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, October 1, 2025 5:24 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

i actually think j0rd might like getting killed. i don't like tom waits either and it's way better than anything by radiohead. there's definitely something to the thom yorke comparison but he's not being british makes a big difference

i actually think j0rd might like getting killed.

I blinked three times at this wow

lol

going so far as to italicize the threat for emphasis seemed a little gratuitous

Ok I know people hate Radiohead for extra-musical reasons these days, but lol at the idea that this record (which I enjoyed!) has anything happening on that level.

(same with Tom Waits in a different sense, but I know some people can't take the voice)

For other uses, see Getting Killed (disambiguation).

the vox remind me more of cold war kids or cage the elephant than waits or yorke. "half real" is the keeper for me.

if the waits thing came just from me, I said specifically he does not sound like tom waits. I was making more of a vibe comparison, they both have a big/distinctive voice over rattly percussion and warped blues guitar. but overall they sound very different

i don't think it came from you per se -- Jordan s/t in the Heavy Metal thread in May: "Heard him described as Tom Waitsian without actually sounding like Tom Waits"

this album is a bit weirdly sequenced. i don’t dislike any of the songs on the first half but it’s really backheavy. i find i often just listen to ‘100 horses’ through to ‘long island’

xp- i’m not a radiohead hater (for reasons musical or extramusical), i respect their game, but it’s not something i would ever put on voluntarily at this point, and id probably be mildly irked if i was subject to listening to it out in public for an extended period.

thanks for reminding me why I will never read any of your posh bullshit melt posts, flopson

“taxes” is the posh melt geese fan’s song of choice

obv this taxpayers alliance op of a rock band are just everything you love about music!

oh good calzino is here and doing posts

keep your beef out of this poultry thread

https://i.imgur.com/h4fiuFX_d.webp

what the hell, calzino

sorry I won't bother this thread or poster flopson any more, I'm gone!

posh melt geese virgin vs chavvy radiohead chad

geese up, hos down!

good morning!

I want to like this even more after just how mad the album made Jim DeRogatis. Greg Kot hated it too, but I've not heard DeRo get this mad about something in a long time. He called it one of the worst records he's ever heard in his life.

lol

https://www.gq.com/story/how-to-get-cameron-winters-hair-according-to-a-hairstylist

I just bought some cleansing cream and hair wax

Hilarious hockey-hair ref

It’s instamatic and it has such flair.

maybe it would sound better if the guy closed his mouth after each word? idk

Geese - You Get What You Give (New Radicals cover)

What a cover 👏🏻pic.twitter.com/Ytq6aYnuVu

— The Rock Revival (@TheRockRevival_) November 5, 2025

I despise that song so much.

lmao if you cant vibe with cam's mush mouth delivery why are you even in this thread

"vibe with"

correct

https://www.stereogum.com/2328953/new-radicals-gregg-alexander-reacts-to-geeses-you-get-what-you-give-cover/news/

Now, frontman Gregg Alexander (of the New Radicals’) says “Geese must truly be the coolest new band since the White Stripes, because my phone ain’t blown up like this since New Radicals announced reforming for just one day for the 2021 Presidential Inauguration in defiance of the raid on the Capitol,” Alexander begins. He continues:

So I was confused at first by the dozens of texts I awoke to in Nashville Wednesday. Pals forwarding me headlines that there’s “Geese performing live” on BBC ONE who are taking “You Get What You Give” to artistic new heights?!

So I rushed on-line to discover Geese’s music, and by the end of the first chorus of their instant classic “Taxes,” I realized they’re not just the coolest band in decades…they’re one of the best. What a lyric, “Doctor, heal yourself!…I will break my own heart?!

Get What You Give is great lol but im not emoitonally prepared to hear a geese version rn

^^^ dreamer's disease imo

William Tyler, confirmed Geese hater

I wish

— william tyler (@williamtylertn) November 8, 2025

you're doing the lords work

— william tyler (@williamtylertn) November 8, 2025

NOOOOOOO it's SOOOOO bad hahaha

— william tyler (@williamtylertn) November 9, 2025

after i watched the new radicals cover, my youtube algorithm showed me another one that's wayyyyy worse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8nkU8pFsnU

what is william tyler's deal, is he like indie rock joe bonnamassa?

haha nevermind mixed him up with some jandek lookin dude

xxp

I think the video seals the deal for me regarding Geese: NOPE

Is that Emo Phillips?

Just saw Geese last night at a packed sold out 930 Club in DC and still can't make up my mind on whether I like them. I enjoyed when Birthday Party goes commercial metal-punk song 2122 merged into a cover of Iggy & the Stooges "TV Eye" but I liked the latter Iggy song better than the Geese one. I was not a fan of the quirky Primus like instrumental parts of many songs live, but liked more straight-ahead and quieter rock ones. Singer Cameron Winter didn't talk much between songs. His mumble mouthed singing seemed like an amalgamation of various singers mentioned in this thread - Thom Yorke, Van Morrison, Tom Verlaine, Nick Cave... I couldn't hear backup vocals from the band very well (maybe just due to sound mix there). The sold out crowd seemed largely thrilled. There were a bunch of 20-something slamdancers and some crowd surfers of multiple genders.

it's funny that this band seems to be the dividing line for a lot of people, my wife's immediate take "I think music has now left me behind". they're not for me, but I guess I don't begrudge the youth for being way into something no one else likes, the youth need to have something to care about.

Drunk muppet sounding motherfucker.

Let’s sound like we’re singing in Ween’s The Pod all the time.

he sounds like Mac DeMarco looks

GA tickets for the NYC show next week are selling for $500+

yeah they were gong for that on stubhub here too. my son had bought tix before they blew up (on stubhub) and then forgot to ever check to see if the tix had been transferred to him until he got to the venue; they hadn't. No doubt seller decided to sell them to someone else for 10x as much.

Angry Goose Fans

love ‘trinidad’

idk there is also a non zero chance i am singing along to “theres a bomb in my car”, driving thru a school zone, captured on camera and resultantly deported to venezuela so thats something too

your dad and I met at the geese pit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIol9hig2G4

great set. the slowed-down version of “half real” is a revelation

Which song comes to mind when you are genuinely joyful? I mean, carefree, energy flowing, dancing, moving, kind of happy?

MARIANNE, HAUGESUND, NORWAY

Dear Marianne,
This morning, I got up at five, I couldn’t sleep, I’d fretted about this and I’d fretted about that. The night had played its cruel trick of turning all the good things in my life into bad things, and it was all what-ifs, and yeah-buts, and what-abouts swirling around in my mind. I crept out of the house so as not to wake Susie, putting on a winter coat because the temperature had dropped and it was sleeting outside.

I walked to the park through the woods and across the lawns. All the ducks were quacking, the Egyptian geese were honking, and the swans flapped about, the leaves were falling from the trees, and the sky looked like my mind - sleety, unsettled and rumbling. Down at the lake, I could tell the water temperature had dropped significantly because some early morning swimmers were standing around, shivering and slapping themselves, their skin reddened by the cold. I stripped off my clothes and leapt in, swimming across the lake in my usual dithering way, allowing the icy water to do its work - rearranging the blood, cleansing the temple, expelling the morning demons. I got out, dressed, shivering so much I could barely tie my shoelaces, then grabbed a coffee from the café and walked back across the park. I put my earphones in and played Geese’s new album, Getting Killed. The first song starts with Cameron Winter singing, in his lovely, plaintive way -

“I try/ I try/ I try so hard”

- and I feel those simple words down to my soul, because we all try, because we all try so hard, and when the band kicks into the chorus - I mean, my God, those drums - and Cameron Winter screams, again and again -

“There’s a bomb in my car! There’s a bomb in my car!”

- all worry is laid to waste. The endorphins rushing wild from the freezing water, the music pounding through my body, the caffeine, the fucking ducks and the God-roiling sky - no what-ifs, no yeah-buts, no what-abouts, no caveats, at all. I am made happy, and that happiness is entire and incontestable. And all the way home, I go—to my beautiful waking wife - on this, the best day ever.

Love, Nick

Well, if you try the best you can....

finally listened to this; i liked the last song but

it's fine and appropriate that i don't get it, i suppose

this sometimes sounds like a band fronted by Adam Driver's character from Girls.

Put *that* on a sleeve sticker.

caught up to the Sound Opinions episode where Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot reviewed Getting Killed ... and boy did they hate it lol

great set. the slowed-down version of “half real” is a revelation

― comrade jhøsh (k3vin k.),

gosh, they sure are tight. The first time they won me.

This year's Greta Van Fleet. William Tyler OTM

This band reminds me of Animal Collective 15 years ago, in the sense that I don't really get it and it makes me feel old.

Just wait until Geese guy crowd-sources funding for a new laptop and a trip to the Caribbean to research the roots of reggae or some shit.

This band reminds me of Animal Collective 15 years ago, in the sense that I don't really get it and it makes me feel old.

LOL that is so me, too. And yet I don’t get The National either 🤔🤔🤔

very popular with the zoomers

Comment I made to a friend tonight was, "Well they're better than Arcade Fire, and I didn't like them either." I'm not mad at kids for like interesting stuff that doesn't speak to me.

*for liking*

I've realized that my biggest problem with the singing is that I have a goofy singing voice that I use to bug my wife and it sounds too similar to Goose man. Like, "Jolene" will be playing and I'll start singing along in voice remarkably like his, except deliberately bad.

I just did a listenthrough of the album and there were at least three songs that I thought were absolutely fantastic, all of which emphasized the rhythm section over the singer

The rest was mostly “eh okay”, basically I felt like I was hearing a bunch of different bands from the past 50 years chopped up in a blender with lyrics bellowed by someone doing a bad Thom Yorke impersonation, only somewhat tolerable

I will also say it’s very funny that the band called Geese has a singer that sounds like this

Ha. Yes .

Lindsey Zoladz at NY Times has Geese as her #1 album on her albums of the year list. Jon Caramanica of NY Times does not include it.

xp my kid and I enjoy honking along geese-style to songs in the radio, especially now at Xmas time.

ha well one of the floats in the Macy's Thanksgiving parade was playing Cobra by Geese

DJP aren’t you a semipro singer? Doesn’t his voice irritate you? lol sort geese fans

sorry

I really liked their last record and find the new one pretty decent, but the album of the year praise just has me completely baffled, tbh. I kind of feel like it's been such a messy, shitshow of a year that maybe people are looking for a record that reflects a messy shitshow maybe? See also Pitchfork's choice for album of the year.

xp to brimstead: Yes, I’m a semipro singer but I’m also a Robert Smith super fan. I am not absolutist about what a “good” voice sounds like, it’s more about whether they can credibly do the material in the style they are intending. I generally like when people stay in pitch so that’s definitely something I will criticize and I will also criticize vocal character if I find it off/unpleasant/incongruent to the style, but mostly I’m just concerned with whether the person consistently sounds the same live as they do on record.

That said, dude does sound like “strident Thom Yorke has awful hemorrhoids” at times but I find it mostly works with the material. I do like the songs that emphasize the rhythm section over the singer a lot more.

i think maybe part of the letdown for me w/ the new record was the realization that the vocals on the previous one weren't somebody coming out the gate confident with a fully formed if idiosyncratic vocal style, but rather it appears that was just some kind of passing phase and on the new record he seems way more all over the place and it's far less interesting to me than if he had committed to the bit i guess?

This album is not as good as 3D Country but is the one blowing up, go figure. "Bow Down" might be the best song on here along with "Cobra."

I haven't read a lot of reviews about the new album, or even really talked about it with anyone, but I hear a very clear Waterboys/World Party vibe at the core of it (not to mention Cameron Winter sounding like a marble-mouthed Karl Wallinger) and it makes me like it way more than any of the other references people generally throw around.

god i WISH i heard any waterboys or world party in this record

To my ears, it mainly comes in the melodies/phrasing and the chord choices (and Cameron's voice). Their arrangements are fully Brooklyn indie, no argument there.

yeah i mean, the first time i heard "you get what you give" i thought it was world party and he sounded fairly like the new radicals singer on the geese cover of "you get what you give," so there's something there.

getting killed is way better than 3d country c’mon

I'm enjoying finally listening to this in the last few days. "Islands of Men" is the track that really made me like it.

I want to say he's like Adam Sandler doing Astral Weeks.

getting killed is way better than 3d country c’mon

― flopson, Friday, December 5, 2025 10:14 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I love how this statement covers so many of the opinions itt

"Taxes" should top the upcoming NRO list of Best Conservative Songs.

I never would have likened this dude to Thom Yorke from listening to 3D Country, but it's absolutely there on this new one. "Half Real" is extremely Yorke-ish.

i hear yorke most on the title track. there's some good singing on 3d but i find some of the vocal styles he tries out sound amateurish. like his baritone (for example in the beginning of 2122) sounds like when a kid does an impression of an adult. also some of his soul/r&b style singing sounds like black keys. i like the album but there's something kind of alt-J/cage the elephant about his singing that repels me. glad he discovered the new bad singing style

Gotta say, that BBC radio listing reproduced in the EOY thread made me appreciate their album titling. People would apparently be going on the radio talking about "Glory by Perfume Genius" and "LUX by Rosalía" and "Who Let the Dogs Out by Lambrini Girls" and so on, but Lauren Laverne chose the exquisite "Getting Killed by Geese".

LIKE A SAILOR IN A BIG GREEN BOAT

LIKE A SAILOR IN A BIG GREEN COAT

listened to this all the way through for the first time this evening after smoking half a joint to myself post-workout.

it’s pretty good! i wanted to hate it! but i found myself utterly charmed.

i also teach and work with Zoomers and interact with them on a regular basis so that this attracts them makes sense to me— they’re wryly earnest, disarmingly funny, and have obsessive yet dispersed, uneven knowledges of music and culture in general. this band seems like a real embodiment of those qualities imho.

that's a nice way of putting it. describes kind of how i feel about this music ultimately -- earnest and harmless basically

also, fgti— “Thom Yorke on T” made me absolutely cackle, bravo

The earworms in this album are individual lines, not whole choruses. “You can make the cobras dance but not meeee”

I'm still baffled by the Thom Yorke comparisons. I just don't hear any resemblance.

A toothless and more raggedy Neil Young, perhaps.

Played the album through twice and haven’t felt a flicker of interest in revisiting it since

I'm going to revisit it now. I gave it three or four good listens when it came out and very little of it stuck. It felt messy and I didn't enjoy Winter's new vocal approach compared to the previous album - a creaky, hiccish whine pasted sloppily over the music as an incoherent paste. If I were to compare it to Radiohead, it would be TKOL - a vermicelli mess. But I'm wondering if it will make more sense to me now I've had a break?

The Yorke comparison makes sense to me if you focus on his cadences and intonations— listen to “Au Pays” and imagine the voice an octave higher.

He reminds me of Thom in places like the middle of "Long Island City", i.e. Thom in Damo Suzuki mode.

"Trinidad" is the one song on GK I was finding it hard to like. I felt like blurbs were overselling the "bomb in my car" line. But some of the live renditions are amazing (c.f. closer of their 11/12/25 Washington show.)

The Yorke comparison makes sense to me if you focus on his cadences and intonations— listen to “Au Pays” and imagine the voice an octave higher.

― a tv star not a dirty computer man (the table is the table), Tuesday, 6 January 2026 12:34 (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Nope. Not hearing it. Cameron's whole tone, accent and delivery sounds totally different to me. His voice wavers all over the place whereas Thom is very much not like that. He sounds like the town drunk with a mouthful of tobacco, it's way more loosey-goosey than Thom would dream of singing. DEfinitely hearing something different to you here.

I am enjoying this mildly more on this listen though. Long Island City is standing out for the lyrics. Winter's vocal choices are still the weak point here for me (I enjoyed his voice on 3D Country). And a lack of bass / too much upper-high end in the drums.

I think the Thom Yorke comparison is due to the sort of shamanesque way he seems to be channeling the songs rather than just performing them in a more straightforward way. The offbeat, surreal lyrics add to this dreamlike quality of the music.

i am still annoyed to see the band info on my car radio with goose and geese and not know which is who. goose is the uh the jammy one? goose was on the 5 secs if screen time i gave it but i turned the channel to stay sane. i didnt even hear it i just hot the button.

hit

"Trinidad" is the one song on GK I was finding it hard to like. I felt like blurbs were overselling the "bomb in my car" line. But some of the live renditions are amazing (c.f. closer of their 11/12/25 Washington show.)

― jmm, Tuesday, January 6, 2026 4:37 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

feel the same way about the song and about the live version. they’re great performers

Police just knocked on my door and told me I'm required to comment on this thread, so here's my piece: I listened to Getting Killed and thought it sounded like a good, interesting band that I don't really want to listen to.

I know this is the Geese thread but I want to say Heavy Metel is outstanding. I wasn't going to touch it but the video "Love Takes Time" changed all that. That along with "Drinking Age" and "$0" ect are great but "Nausicaä (Love Will Be Revealed)" might be the best song he has done. Definitely the best ballad of 2025.

Nausicaä rules

heavy metel is a great album. this kid is the real deal. *chomps on cigar*

in terms of this band's appeal, treeship OTM re: "the sort of shamanesque way he seems to be channeling the songs" which i think people are ready for after so much calculated lyrical brand-farming and autotune relentlessness, tendencies sort of peaking with "brat" in a lot of ways. i think people want some mystery and humanity back which is why this is connecting even if it's not as hook laden as it could be.

after so much calculated lyrical brand-farming and autotune relentlessness, tendencies sort of peaking with "brat" in a lot of ways

brat and getting killed are part of the same wave

i disagree with that

Geese vs Charli isn't a binary.

p sure I have no idea what you mad lads are banging on about any more

Every generation gets the GAPDY it deserves I guess.

brat is not the culmination/peak of late 2010s and early 2020s dance-pop trends, it's a break from them. late 2010s-early 2020s future nostalgia disco, cheugy earnest stadium edm like chainsmokers, lots of stuff like ava max or ariana grande with an r&b inflected snap. it's true that brat uses autotune, but it does it in that hyperpop/mumble rap way that makes it sound like shit on purpose

getting killed is less radical of a shift, but it still feels like a break with some recent indie trends. it doesn't have that country-tinged twee big thief/boygenius sound at all (which imo makes geese sound much more fresh than wednesday), doesn't have the studio fussiness of the 1975, not soggy reverb like alvvays

never said anything about brat being the culmination of chainsmokers or whatever, but it's absolutely the culmination of hyperpop!

i was more highlighting a lyrical/framing tendency that's been hegemonic in terms of there being a constant 4th-wall breaking and overt concern with brandmaking and making the artist's personality/life a constant presence in a very post-social media way. the autotune serves to further optimize said branding by increasing lyrical intelligibility and also presents another "optimized" way of experiencing lyrics/brandmaking but also maybe AT is sort of orthogonal here

now sure brat is also a critique of the above in a way, but you might say a sort of immanent critique ... in any event i just think to the question why geese is getting so much attention, i am saying the moment was ripe for a more mysterian oracular vibe since we've been saturated with cynical intentional algorithm-gaming vibes for so long

soggy reverb like alvvays

ok, hold up

I don't think drowning a voice in autotune makes it more intelligible?

they're much more willing to be opaque lyrically and they play with unusual song structures. not as slick as boygenius or anything like that xp

Just announced: Geese ON SNL January 24, 2026. Maybe they will finally crack the Billboard 200.

I hear Geese as very much country-tinged and twee (in a tongue-in-cheek way)

It's country-tinged, but it's like it's more three-dimensional or something?

I was waiting for that

A better name for Heavy Metal would have been Silly Goose.

I hear Geese as very much country-tinged and twee (in a tongue-in-cheek way)

Sorta like the rolling stones

I get beggars banquet vibes often from their music

Yeah a song like “cobra” is very beggar’s banquet.

I like a lot of things about them but the singer’s voice halts my enjoyment constantly. Sounds like kermit with a sinus infection. I can tolerate it in small doses but it gets on my nerves after three songs.

the Rolling Stones are twee?

geese sounds americana but not country, to split hairs

and it doesn’t sound at all like the saddle creek style of indie country, to my ears at least

i don’t really find getting killed to be twee at all

never said anything about brat being the culmination of chainsmokers or whatever, but it's absolutely the culmination of hyperpop!

i was more highlighting a lyrical/framing tendency that's been hegemonic in terms of there being a constant 4th-wall breaking and overt concern with brandmaking and making the artist's personality/life a constant presence in a very post-social media way. the autotune serves to further optimize said branding by increasing lyrical intelligibility and also presents another "optimized" way of experiencing lyrics/brandmaking but also maybe AT is sort of orthogonal here

now sure brat is also a critique of the above in a way, but you might say a sort of immanent critique ... in any event i just think to the question why geese is getting so much attention, i am saying the moment was ripe for a more mysterian oracular vibe since we've been saturated with cynical intentional algorithm-gaming vibes for so long

― Grebo McEntire (uptown churl), Wednesday, 7 January 2026 17:26 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

culmination of hyperpop, or beginning of hyperpop as actual pop? a year ago i would’ve been more confident of the latter, now i’m not so sure

i like your point about lyrics, but i still maintain both albums are on the same side of a “page turn” away from different but related respective 2010s trends. the tradition of indie rock albums with absurdist and impersonal lyrics is long and varied, to me his lyrics fit in very well there

I can totally see that and maybe it speaks to my own ignorance of guitar music of the ‘10s

perhaps a shift in balance vs end or beginning of an era is the synthesis here. But still, he was filmed by PT Anderson at Carnegie hall, there’s some sort of vibe shift I’m intrigued by, more so than the songs themselves atm

He was impersonated on SNL, that's probably about as zeitgeist as it gets.

At the very least they're big in New York

Replaying this on a whim this afternoon and, yeah, I get the Thom Yorke vocal comparison

Yeah, got the album for Xmas, liked it.

I see there's a limited edition live LP coming on the Third Man website.

a second terrible Geese cover has hit the timeline, I repeat, a second terrible Geese cover has hit the timeline

geese - stayin' alive pic.twitter.com/fLkM21QkUX

— Acervo Cameron Winter (@mrcameronbrasil) January 19, 2026

I'll give them credit for this, their cover choices are so bad they seem like they're trolling.

the kind of thing that would earn Jimmy Fallon a promotion

Maybe this is like their version of Bob Dylan's Self Portrait where they do shitty covers to lower people's expectations and give themselves some breathing room?

(just being facetious)

(but if they do a shitty version of "The Boxer," the game's up)

Anthony Fantano: What is this shit, fam?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw7MC6_0a2Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVGklLKJv2c

I actually don't like "Trinidad" that much on the album itself but that live performances was outstanding.

Cocaine was Fuckin brilliant on SNL I thought. I liked his solo album but not their stuff so much but yeah that was A Moment for sure.

I actually don't like "Trinidad" that much on the album itself but that live performances was outstanding.

― Bee OK, Sunday, 25 January 2026 14:15 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

TS: "Trinidad" vs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq-yBB3DSGk

cant actually recall the last snl live perf as good as trinidad was

Highly recommend the version of "Trinidad" at the end of this set. It's insane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti9Tgy2tV9Y

no one cares but i like these guys now. those live performances are great.

i care

🤗

I think the performances are good but man I just don’t get it. It makes me remember when people were hyping Car Seat Headrest a decade or so ago and I felt like I was listening to the wrong artist. Same as CSH, I’ll be surprised if people still care about them before the decade ends.

skinner meme

C'mon they are so much better than Car Seat Headrest. A better comparison would be the Strokes, Animal Collective or maybe even Wet Leg.

I suspect that Geese/Cameron Winter to get at least four songs (two each) into our Top 77 2025.

x-post - I was at that Washington DC show that JMM posted the full video of, and when Cameron Winter started screaming what sounded like to me "fuck the people in this town" at the end of "Trinidad" and threw his mic down that was pretty insane and cool. But I wasn't completely won over by the full set. as I noted upthread back in November 2025, old guy me's fave song from the set was the portion of Iggy & the Stooges "TV Eye" they did.

These guys seem amazing live. I think the album almost sounds like a palimpsest for live shows nu, Taxes sounds incomplete without a chorus singing along.

So, the Third Man Rrecords Live album is going to be a thing to get.

Yeah ok that’s true. Car Seat Headrest was godawful live and Geese are pretty good live from what I’ve seen.

I still have a hard time getting into Cameron’s Kermit on codeine vocals.

I think the album almost sounds like a palimpsest for live shows

Yeah, same, and there's so much live material to dig through. I'm not really bothering with the album versions anymore.

I don't get into buzzy indie bands very often, but Geese are hugely endearing to me, idk. I just think they have something special.

I don't think their appeal is very hard to fathom. Within a standard indie-rock framework, they're just really fucking weird. Winter's voice is weirdly performative, the music often does unexpected things like the lurching of Trinidad, and he sings a lot of really weird lyrics that on their face are often really dumb but genuinely so dumb that they become cool (green coat/green boat, my wife is in the shed, all the husband and wife shit in general).

i really hope to catch geese live in the upcoming year

yeah there's a feeling like "something interesting is going on here but i'm not sure what it is." everything is really assured and lucid but to what end it isn't exactly clear. there's a sense of mystery that's appealing. i've fallen hard for cameron's lyrics and voice (and the apparent hair on his chest under that a-shirt).

My current favourite live clip of them is "3D Country" in this 2024 Pickathon set. Cameron's too funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od1xwGypfYY

it’s funny, i find him totally unappealing sexually lol.

but i listened to Getting Killed again today while moving through slow snowy traffic, because a friend of mine absolutely loathes this band and can’t understand why anyone likes them… he usually can find some reasoning as to why people like things he doesn’t like, but can’t with Geese. it is “freaking him out,” apparently.

anyway, my new thesis is that they’re doing so many things that he likes that they actually cancel each other out.

That’s not a bad thesis. I think I’m somewhere in there. For any thing I kind of vibe to in their music, there’s another element that I dislike.

But there’s so many music out there that I actually enjoy that I don’t think I’ll stick around and find out if the positive ends up outweighing the negatives.

https://www.avclub.com/geese-snl-performance-discourse-2026

Everyone who hated Geese’s SNL performance needs to chill out
Ashlee Simpson, Fear, DJ Khaled, Lana Del Rey, and… Geese?!? Yes, you read that right: social media’s elder-millennial and Gen-X contingent would have you believe that Geese’s SNL appearance on Saturday night is now one of the worst in the show’s 51-year history. In a recent email forwarded to me, music critic Bob Lefsetz wrote that “despite all the hosannas in the press, the word [about Geese] does not seem to be spreading.” Look, Geese have over 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify, sold out their recent US tour, and got invited to perform on one of the oldest network television shows still going. Maybe it doesn’t matter what the rock rags are saying about these four New Yorkers, but it’s not like Geese is some obscure underground band. They don’t need an SNL cast member stumping for them like John Belushi did for Fear in 1981 (though somebody in the writer’s room is responsible for pitching James Austin Johnson’s Cameron Winter impression last month). It’s OK to acknowledge that the hype exists, even if you’re not opening your wallet to it anytime soon...

i think the album was fine and all but i'm not really understanding why people are so excited about their live performances from the videos i've seen

I am not interested in this band at all, but I can't see how anyone could say their performance was bad.

(though somebody in the writer’s room is responsible for pitching James Austin Johnson’s Cameron Winter impression last month)

based on everything i'd suspect JAJ is a fan and started doing an impression on his own, he's a pretty ILM coded SNL guy

I'm okay on this band, not a huge fan but they have some cool aspects.

i did like the car bomb song, just felt good to have something a little chaotic happening on a tv show in 2026

The (great) drummer plays with headphones, wonder what he is getting in there?

Gave the first album a quick listen and it's really good? Not sure what happened between the first two albums and this one to make them go from little-knowners to one of the most talk-ed about bands in recent years; especially since Getting Killed is such a hot mess compared to the earlier stuff

the drummer's moustache bothers me, it doesn't connect in the middle and reminds me of GG Allin

xp dog latin: It's undoubtedly already been mentioned upthread, but the Winter solo album Heavy Metal came out in Dec 2024, once most critics had already written their EOY lists. That album garnering lots of attention in late '24/early '25, combined with the slight but significant change in Winter's singing style from leaning into his baritone on 3D Country to the vaguely Yorke-ish/somewhat more Wainwright-y/less-Stonesy-or-Crowesy, more Cam-the-mannish falsetto thing that he leaned into at the piano on Heavy Metal and seemed to subsequently bring over to Geese proper on Getting Killed, seemed to both factor into the present-day Geese glow-up IMO

The reason I posted that was because I don't get the worst performance ever stuff or what peace, man said.

my new thesis is that they’re doing so many things that he likes that they actually cancel each other out

Table actually tapping into the zeitgeist a bit here, because I've increasingly seen equal compliments and complaints that the band is occupying some strange and strangely frustrating in-between space, a kind of purgatory/precipice, like something perpetually on the brink of tipping over, resulting in lots of "I don't like/get them, but ..."

An example (and apologies if the person that posted or others that already saw this are on ILX): "I think what makes them interesting is how tantalizing their music is without necessarily having payoff. It’s sort of like if Slint redid Spiderland to remove the explosive loud parts from half their songs. That said, if I had to describe them to a music nerd, I would say it’s like Tim Buckley playing Beefheart which sounds true but doesn’t mean much. Which I think is perfect. I’m just glad to hear a newish band that knows what they’re doing yet evokes some sense of mystery or not having all the answers right there for you."

xxxpost: Yeah JAJ is very much into indie artists and probably pitched the Cameron Winter impression himself. He also does a great ANOHNI impression:

https://xcancel.com/JAJCenter/status/1542264946997612545

i think the album was fine and all but i'm not really understanding why people are so excited about their live performances from the videos i've seen

― ufo, Tuesday, January 27, 2026 3:11 AM (thirteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

snl trinidad was the first one i found really compelling in terms of a performance

but i also really like the clips from this nyc outdoor show where they're playing on the ground, mostly for the crowd reactions. so pure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrqHQ4046DE

xp Josh in Chicago--I hadn't really thought of the Beefhearty era of Tim Buckley as a comp/ref (Lorca, Starsailor...), but fair enough! (Total non-sequitur, but for all the Thom Yorke comparisons Winter gets, I most hear Radiohead in the instrumental feel of the second-half coda of the title track "Getting Killed" FWIW, v "Weird Fishes" IMO)

i listened to this again today while washing climbing holds in the freezing cold at work, and yeah, i love this record ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’ve finally just listened to this album and after one play what they sound like is a couple of the everything everything lps, but not quite as polished. cannot decide if they are as good. do they get compared?

ha all this feel did was make me go listen to EE, realize how dance-y they are. and how much i dig a lot of it. they both copy yorke tho

we keep honkin Trinidad into Planet Caravan, goose got some Ozzy in 'em

AC Newman wrote something on Instagram that was basically like “people who hate this band are total idiots, I love Geese” :-)

he should stick with canada geese

Taxes is such a great live track.

Part of the 'mystery' is that they play with rhythm and meter, imo. Trinidad is in 13/8, the 'Doctor Doctor Heal Yourself' part goes three bars where you'd expect it to go four bars, etc.

can't really get with the rufus wainwright vocals and I find the car seat headrest comparison otm as far as me not getting the hype

but that trinidad live on snl ruled ok and if the young people are into this i'm not complaining

Amazing SNL performance, I agree. Made me feel nostalgic.

There were 100 horses dancing
Maybe 124

Why do I feel like he's not being honest about the number of horses?

Cobra stuck in my head this morning

Honestly think “Love Takes Miles” is the best thing he’s written.

tiny desk is wonderful

Geese should cover The Crash Test Dummies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhbpMCZTe8c

Husbands
Cobra
Half Real

I heard the band on the radio for the first time, the song "Cobra," and if I didn't know the group's more chaotic tendencies I don't think I would have taken notice of it as anything but an OK pretty indie warbler song.

The old links are dead:

Au Pays du Cocaine (Live on SNL)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFo_c4UNoXM

Has anyone heard Live at Third Man Records yet?

Yeah, i have it.

Lol, I should have been more specific, opinions of it? Not on streaming is why I'm asking

I dunno, I quite liked it, it seems a bit short which probably means I wanted more, still feel like it's massively informed by Radiohead, not gonna dash out and get the back catalogue, daresay it'll get a couple of further plays before it gets filed alongside getting killed, good luck to 'em...

https://www.wired.com/story/geese-chaotic-good-marketing-industry-plant/

https://archive.ph/YGNY5

I assume that any new artist I have heard of is working with a PR company, otherwise I would not have heard of them. But there seems to be a fine line between standard industry practice and tactics that are perceived as shady or inorganic. Or maybe most people just don't know what constitutes standard industry practice.

Yeah, PR is PR. The gist I get is that this company's strategy - not in a sneaky way but in a way that took advantage of the current landscape - helped get the band (which already had fans) on the radar of a bunch of people that might not ever have heard them, which is ultimately good. At the end of the day you can lead a horse to water, etc., but not to compare it to Nirvana or anything, it's ... a bit like that. Pre-"Nevermind," plenty of people listened to music like Nirvana, not to mention Nirvana itself, but the vast majority of people didn't. We take for granted that there is always something different, but for those raised on top 40/radio, "Nevermind" was a breath of fresh air. So Geese, it's a quirky little band, maybe not for me but compelling enough that if it were to pop up on a social media feed, as a clip or soundtrack, I could imagine new ears exploring further and getting hooked.

I don't get it -- big whoop.

you don't get why creating fake fan profiles is bad?

Now do Wet Leg

article justifies my suspicion of any new band recommendation on this board!

this article is basically the equivalent of if someone in the 90s wrote an expose about how labels were paying people called "street teams" to plaster downtowns with posters promoting a band's new album

idk man I think creating entire fake social media profiles is on a different level, posters are just advertising

lol street teams were flyers and stickers and posters and not warping algorithms not even close to the same thing

yeah guys, welcome to the year 2026. do you guys know about these things called cell phones?

More like cell phonies, amirite?

There was also this thing called payola, which paid off radio programmers with cash and coke in exchange for eventual phony chart positions.

yeah guys, welcome to the year 2026. do you guys know about these things called cell phones?

yes which is why it's different now. glad we could clear this up. "Organic" publicity has always existed--the article alludes to steak dinners and lines of blow--but it's at a much different scale now and has a much bigger reach than ever before but thanks for making my point for me

xp payola was bad too!

Whatever it takes to get people into the tent is fair play. People - real people - are buying this (very bad and boring) band's records, and going to their (likely very bad and boring) shows. How the band was first brought to their attention doesn't matter.

yeah guys, welcome to the year 2026. do you guys know about these things called cell phones?

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, April 14, 2026 11:31 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's why i don't answer any calls unless i know the number

it's at a much different scale now and has a much bigger reach than ever before but thanks for making my point for me

― a (waterface), Tuesday, April 14, 2026 11:35 AM (twenty-one seconds ago)

it's at a much bigger scale because everything is, sure, but if you think that it has a "much bigger reach" you are falling for fearmongering on behalf of wired, i'm sorry to say. the vast majority of inorganic music promotion posts reach and influence next to nobody. in fact i'd argue that promotion actually had a "much bigger reach" prior to social media when monoculture existed and masses of people were far easier to communicate with thru channels of mass media. 100 inorganic posts about geese are rain drops falling into the ocean

in fact i'd argue that promotion actually had a "much bigger reach" prior to social media when monoculture existed and masses of people were far easier to communicate with thru channels of mass media.

Ask me how hard it is to sell 500 CDs.

falling for fearmongering

who is afraid, exactly

that would be the people posting immediately before me, Cattedrale metropolitana di Santa Maria de Episcopio

not sure how you misread my contempt as fear, but whatever

ok guys, i would encourage you to read the definition of the word fearmongering. we're all learning a lot in here today i think

to me it feels like a normal response to feel strange about a band who hires a PR firm to create a bunch of fake accounts so it looks like you have people who like your music when that’s not the case. do i really care tho? or am i for some reason fearful? no

yeah i don't get your tone i am not falling for fearmongering i assure you

i also think it’s shocking that these humble lads who started jamming in their parents’ multimillion dollar brownstone could stoop to something like this

to me it feels like a normal response to feel strange about a band who hires a PR firm to create a bunch of fake accounts so it looks like you have people who like your music when that’s not the case. do i really care tho? or am i for some reason fearful? no

― Cattedrale metropolitana di Santa Maria de Episcopio, Tuesday, April 14, 2026 11:52 AM (thirty-seven seconds ago)

ah yes the classic "i am posting multiple times in a thread and yet i promise i don't actually care about this" stance

btw have you all seen what geese (or rather their management) are charging for their gigs

i care about this discussion? why are you being so weird

i am not falling for fearmongering i assure you

― a (waterface), Tuesday, April 14, 2026 11:53 AM (one minute ago)

in fact, you are! as evidenced by your posts in which you misunderstand the dynamic being described in the story

i care about this discussion? why are you being so weird

― Cattedrale metropolitana di Santa Maria de Episcopio, Tuesday, April 14, 2026 11:54 AM (twenty-three seconds ago)

because you post like a dickhead?

to me it feels like a normal response to feel strange about a band who hires a PR firm to create a bunch of fake accounts so it looks like you have people who like your music when that’s not the case. do i really care tho? or am i for some reason fearful? no

this, and to suggest that promotion had a much bigger reach before social media is just wrong. we're all glued with phones to our faces and get content drilled into our skulls all the time. that's significantly different than say when someone comes back from sxsw with a stack of Archers of Loaf tapes to pass around at the record store for free because they got a freak steak dinner from the folks who run alias.

man jordan you gotta stop calling people names

it's unbecoming

i don't really know if this kind of botting is materially different from the usual strategy of "paying people to post things," and i am sure that plenty of artists who have attempted this haven't done it with this kind of success.

why was geese more successful? if i were to rank reasons for geese's success (not even mentioning the music or quality thereof), i would place the bots no higher than third, behind the band's genuine word-of-mouth buzz and very high levels of traditional media buy-in.

to me it feels like a normal response to feel strange about a band who hires a PR firm to create a bunch of fake accounts so it looks like you have people who like your music when that’s not the case

except geese didn't hire the firm, and people do like their music. so which of us is having the abnormal response?

you seem quite upset so i'm not going to engage with this convo anymore

This definitely seems like PR as usual. If you were paying thousands for a PR campaign in 2026, you'd expect them to try and get your tracks on Tik Tok.

And in my glancing experiences with music PR, it still by no means guarantees that something will stick. You can try to shove it in people's faces and it will still die on the vine if no one connects with it.

to suggest that promotion had a much bigger reach before social media is just wrong. we're all glued with phones to our faces and get content drilled into our skulls all the time.

you're confusing volume with efficacy

that's significantly different than say when someone comes back from sxsw with a stack of Archers of Loaf tapes to pass around at the record store for free because they got a freak steak dinner from the folks who run alias.

you're alluding to what is essentially some form of payola, when forms of payola still exist, which don't include paying a marketing firm for promotional tactics. creating fan pages is essentially an evolution of guerrilla marketing. it's like getting mad at flash mobs. now if you want to say that such a thing is corny sure i will agree with you, but the idea that it's some sort of newfangled nefarious scheme that has conjured fictitious fanbases is to have very little perspective

It’s a dick move, even if it occurs in an ocean of dick moves and it does not change my Geese feelings.

There do seem to be more overnight sensations these days. Talented or no, someone like Olivia Rodrigo, her first ever concert in Chicago was at a 5000 seat venue, but she definitely could have filled an arena, which she did for two nights the next year. Chappell Roan, her first Chicago appearance was at a club, and less than a year later she was playing to over 100,000 people or whatever at Lollapalooza. That's pretty impressive! Trying to think of non Beatles analogs from earlier eras.

https://bsky.app/profile/tedleo.bsky.social/post/3mjhrr3o63s2b

Talented or no, someone like Olivia Rodrigo, her first ever concert in Chicago was at a 5000 seat venue

she was already tween famous from disney channel and her first single addressed a tryst involving two other tween famous actors

Chappell Roan, her first Chicago appearance was at a club, and less than a year later she was playing to over 100,000 people or whatever at Lollapalooza

she opened for olivia rodrigo and that blew up her career -- old school!

https://www.billboard.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Chappell-Roan-STREAMING-billboard-1240.jpg

all i said was it was at a bigger scale than ever before, j0rdan S. you're the one that seemed to have the really strong reaction. as far as i can tell, reading over my words, i never really assigned a value statement to any of it. i've been mostly talking about scale. and i def don't agree with your assertion that i think it's some sort of newfangled nefarious scheme, you're putting words in peoples mouths. you're coming in really hot on this topic, which, you know, cool, but maybe cool it with the name calling and the putting words in people's mouths

also no one made a joke about my freak steak dinner and i'm bummed.

she was already tween famous from disney channel and her first single addressed a tryst involving two other tween famous actors

and one of those actors was...sabrina carpenter

I can think of others that seemed to come out of nowhere. Benson Boone, Tate MacRae, Gracie Abrams, Addison Rae, et al. It's anecdotal, I guess. Maybe I missed the ascent! Even SZA, I saw her at a tiny club here one year, next thing I know she's huge!

the word "seemed" is doing an insane level of heavy lifting here...

benson boone -- was on american idol and had a huge tiktok following before he was signed to a label
tate mcrae -- was on reality tv and then was a youtuber
gracie abrams -- her first single was released in 2019, her debut album released in 2023 debuted at number 52 on billboard
addison rae -- one of the most famous tiktokers, famously appeared on jimmy fallon before she even released any music

there are absolutely songs, hits etc that blow up overnight virally going from literally nothing to millions of streams in the span of 72 hours. but there's a lot of evidence over the last 5 years that that is not actually a sustainable method of building a real fanbase. pretty much when any musician "blows up overnight" the real story is actually of a fanbase amassing over time in some niche of the internet (usually one not trafficked by adults) until something breaks the dam and a bunch of people find out about the person

there are lots of people who feel like charli xcx blew up "out of nowhere" w/ brat

Did that Ted Leo Bluesky link work? (Testing out Zing). I appreciate his perspective.

yeah I can see it, that's a good take

there are absolutely songs, hits etc that blow up overnight virally going from literally nothing to millions of streams in the span of 72 hours. but there's a lot of evidence over the last 5 years that that is not actually a sustainable method of building a real fanbase. pretty much when any musician "blows up overnight" the real story is actually of a fanbase amassing over time in some niche of the internet (usually one not trafficked by adults) until something breaks the dam and a bunch of people find out about the person

this is super interesting to me, as is yr background knowledge of all the acts Josh mentioned. Rebecca Black seems like a good example of someone w/o a pre-existing base who went truly viral but then couldn't sustain it?

usually one not trafficked by adults

and yeah I think this is key to a lot of the grownups going "this artist just came out of nowhere" e.g. Noah Kahan in my case

My kid tells me Charli was in "Khia asylum" pre-BRAT, lol.

‪Damon K‬
✧@dadadrum✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 12m
The key to the article about marketing Geese isn’t the band - obv a good band, which stands up to being heard/discussed - but the industry’s sick use of stats generated by pay-to-play streaming and social media platforms

one of the few musicians who i can think of that "blew up overnight" -- which is to say had not already amassed a sizable following online for some other reason -- and rode it to a legitimate career for a somewhat sustainable period of time is Lil Nas X, but i think the reaction to his music first-post album, personal issues aside, was evidence that the sustainability of his enterprise was a bit of a mirage

didn't he have other big hits?

after "old town road" yeah, that's what i mean when i say he was one of the only ones who was able to "blow up overnight" in an actual way and then parlay that into a real fanbase/audience for his music, however the fanbase prob ended up being pretty fickle in the end?

ice spice is maybe another, but again ended up proving to have pretty fragile standing in the end

yah that ted leo skeet and subsequent skeets is great

Was surprised to see Oliver Anthony playing fairly large venues in Australia and Europe last year.

that's the radical centrist beardo? haven't heard that name in a while...

‪haha

Jesse‬
✧@requiem✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 1h
you shouldn’t learn about bands from shady TikTok manipulation, you should learn about bands by hanging out with a girl you like but are also extremely afraid of

this is exactly how I heard about the first DRI record

I would love to see how effective this kind of marketing is if it came with some flag explaining what it was.

_ in fact i'd argue that promotion actually had a "much bigger reach" prior to social media when monoculture existed and masses of people were far easier to communicate with thru channels of mass media._

Ask me how hard it is to sell 500 CDs.

of jazz that next to no one fucking cares about

I’m with J0rdan here, don’t really understand the fuss about this tactic given the way the music industry and algorithms work nowadays.

Also unperson it’s rich that you insult this band when you love the most unlistenable technical metal crap that a person can possibly imagine.

maybe the Wired article is part of the psy op

the psy-op headline is so misleading that it borders on defamation

important point made by Graham Smith of Kleenex Girl Wonder on the Leo thread:

‪Chris Hatfield‬
✧@chrishatfi✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 1h
it's strange, too, as a DIYer with a very small audience - would I engage those kind of services if I had the resources? If I believe that it could find an audience, am I stupid for not doing it?

‪Graham Smith‬
✧@0✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 1h
you can't do it. i can't do it. ted can't do it. only artists like Geese signed to major labels like Universal (like they are) can access this level of market manipulation. this is so major labels like Universal can stay in business, since they have no other way to provide value to their artists.

Ted Leo 🍉‬
✧@ted✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 1h
This is another VERY important point

geese is signed to the independent label partisan records, which is distributed by virgin music group (which is universal's "indie" distributor)

xp wow Graham Smith. a friend and i once drove from Chicago to Cleveland to see KGW play. 1998. good times.

If Elon made a bunch of bots and fake accounts to convince everyone he was cool, everyone would clown him out of town. Whether it’s “against the rules,” I don’t care. It’s just some dork-ass business tactics that should be embarrassing if someone gets busted for it.

Chaotic Good Projects does sound exactly like the name of a marketing firm that Elon would form.

sullying the name of the best alignment :|

If Elon ...

God knows he tried. I mean, that's pretty much why he bought Twitter!

see also - him paying guys to be him in video games

Elon....is not an artist?

says you!!!!!!

I did a quick search to see what services people pay for TikTok follows/likes/etc. and it seems like 1000 likes runs around $12

Does being an artist make this more or less dorky?

how often do you have to renew?

xpost

If Elon made a bunch of bots and fake accounts to convince everyone he was cool, everyone would clown him out of town. Whether it’s “against the rules,” I don’t care. It’s just some dork-ass business tactics that should be embarrassing if someone gets busted for it.