Album Review: Geese – Getting Killed

“Desperation looks good on them.” That could easily be a pull quote, a tagline, or even a thesis statement for Geese’s disorienting and wildly impressive third album, Getting Killed. But that would be underselling the manic beauty of a band that’s decided to swerve—rather than steer—into the chaos.

Let’s be clear: Geese is not the same band they were when they first emerged from Brooklyn’s art-punk bubble with slanted guitars and wide-eyed ambition. If 2023’s 3D Country was their desert peyote trip, Getting Killed is the post-comedown paranoia and the bloodshot clarity that follows. It’s a record full of freakouts, false starts, ghosts of choruses, and breakthroughs that feel like breakdowns. And it’s their best work yet.

A Beautiful, Twitchy Mess

From the opening moments—when Cameron Winter wails “THERE’S A BOMB IN MY CAR” like someone shouting a nightmare into a voicemail—it’s clear we’re not in Kansas (or Williamsburg) anymore. Geese doesn’t ease you in; they throw you into the spin cycle and dare you to find the rhythm.

Winter, fresh off the stripped-down poignancy of his solo project Heavy Metal, returns here as both prophet and prankster. His delivery feels like he’s arguing with himself in a mirror at 4 a.m.—alternately tender, pissed off, and completely lost. The emotional elasticity he flexed on Heavy Metal has mutated into something more erratic, more unhinged, and at times, more profound.

War Drums, Love Bombs, and Lobotomies

A lot of bands grow up. Geese got weirder—and thank god for it. Working with Kenneth Blume (f.k.a. Kenny Beats), they trade indie rock orthodoxy for rhythmic unpredictability. Tracks like “100 Horses” don’t unfold—they charge. Over twitchy, military-funk drum loops, Winter sings from the POV of a wartime general: “All people must die scared or else die nervous.” It’s the kind of line that only makes sense in the moment—which is Geese’s entire M.O.

And yet, for all their high-concept abstraction, they still know how to hook you. “Bow Down” is a full-throated exorcism that morphs into a bizarre chant, and “Husbands” explodes into a festival-worthy singalong that somehow sounds like both Arcade Fire and Death Grips. “Half Real” is the closest thing to a love song they’ve attempted—and they still sneak in a reference to a lobotomy.

Not Cool Anymore—and Better for It

Back in the day, Geese wore the NYC rock lineage like a vintage leather jacket—cool, if a little oversized. But with Getting Killed, they torch the jacket and dance around the flames. They’re no longer interested in sounding like the city’s next big thing—they’re building their own unruly kingdom of post-punk funk, cryptic balladry, and barely-contained hysteria.

The band’s time in Blume’s L.A. studio, cut off from their scene and surrounded by wildfire smoke, clearly had an impact. This record doesn’t sound written so much as channeled. Much of it emerged from long jams, then sculpted into anxious bursts that rarely resolve. It’s in those moments—when you feel like the track might fall apart entirely—that Geese finds their magic.

Faith in the Flailing

Even at their most unhinged, there’s an undeniable cohesion to Getting Killed. It’s the sound of a band daring itself to go further, to get weirder, to feel more—even if the feeling is panic. The record closes with “Long Island City Here I Come,” a slow-burning epic that ends not with clarity, but with surrender: “I have no idea where I’m going… Here I come.”

That line hits like a mission statement. In a musical landscape increasingly obsessed with control and polish, Geese opts for a different path: messy, manic, vulnerable, and completely unpredictable.

And that’s what makes Getting Killed such a thrilling listen. It doesn’t just capture the sound of a band finding themselves—it captures the moment before that, when they’re still stumbling, still searching, still bleeding and laughing and screaming. In other words: still alive.

RIYL: Black Midi, Talking Heads, Daughters, Alex G, Deerhoof

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Score: 🔥🔥🔥🔥½ / 5