Brooklyn experimental rockers deliver on sky-high expectations with an immersive instant classic.
Brooklyn experimental rockers deliver on sky-high expectations with an immersive instant classic.
It’s a dark time to be alive in America, and the sense of impending apocalypse permeates ‘Getting Killed’. Geese emerge as our sombre guides armed with guns, guitars, and very few answers. Across eleven chapters of malaise, their third and most accomplished album ripples with a timely dread, as Cameron Winter and co. weave doomsday murmurs through taut, isochronal refrains.
“THERE’S A BOMB IN MY CAR,” Winter shrieks on opener ‘Trinidad’, an ideal introduction to a record in which danger and uncertainty are never far away. Guitars dart between opposite stereo channels, Winter’s falsetto drifts above the fray, and then the arrangement detonates: horns blare, drums multiply, everything teetering on the brink of collapse. The music matches the volatility of its themes, wah-wah guitar and minimal bass giving way to explosive fills and bursts of jazz trumpet in an audacious collision of tension and release.
A string of the album’s strongest moments follows in ‘Husbands’, ‘Getting Killed’ and ‘Islands of Men’, the first of which is a song of paradox flirting with industrial and ethereal textures, the Kenny Beats-produced rhythm section taut and intricate, propelling melodies around sharp corners before unveiling meticulously crafted chorus harmonies. Elsewhere, the title track entwines a cut-up Ukrainian choir with warmth and careful composition, while the defiant, festival-ready anthem ‘Taxes’ builds from syncopated percussion to chiming guitar lines that could have stepped out of a Stone Roses record.
‘Getting Killed’ is not a direct successor to ‘3D Country’, but rather a synthesis of that record and Winter’s solo debut ‘Heavy Metal’. Its power lies in unpredictability: this is music outside trend or expectation, driven instead by instinct and improvisation. ‘Au Pays du Cocaine’ exudes melancholy, tenderness and desperation, giving Winter’s baritone space to resonate, while ‘Bow Down’ pivots into an upbeat, jazz-inflected rocker. Amid the album’s abrupt shifts and intricate details, the band never loses control, and every detail feels deliberate. The imagery scattered across ‘Getting Killed’ is often cryptic, at times indecipherable – and it’s not a stretch to imagine Winter himself wrestling with the meanings of his own surreal turns of phrase, yet that opacity only heightens the record’s pull, leaving the listener both perplexed and captivated.
Much of the album’s potency rests with Winter. Following the critical acclaim of ‘Heavy Metal’, it might have seemed he would outgrow Geese entirely, pursuing a solo path. Instead, he emerges as a faintly spiritual figure: part rambling preacher, part rock frontman, commanding attention with every phrase. He fully embraces the different flecks of his vocal timbre, not hiding its idiosyncrasies but instead embracing them as he humanises the record’s tenderest moments and evokes figures as diverse as Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, and Julian Casablancas.
But this doesn’t cause Geese to become mere support for Winter; on the contrary, the rest of the band has grown alongside him. Producer Kenny Beats foregrounds the rhythm section, revealing it as Geese’s most formidable element, while Dominic DiGesu’s basslines are more prominent than ever as he fuses delirious boogie-funk with a raw tone. Drummer Max Bassin is also given room to shine; on ‘Trinidad,’ his kit rattles like an imploding submarine beneath Winter’s explosive vocals. Yet to isolate the players is to miss the point – ‘Getting Killed’ is an album constructed around the band as a unit, and its most compelling moments arise from that collective energy. The album’s pleasure comes from the taut, harmonious tension of their ensemble playing, whether in the languid groove of ‘Husbands,’ the slippery dynamics of ‘Islands of Men,’ or the beatific jangle of ‘Cobra.’
‘Getting Killed’ rounds up the existential dread of 2025 and delivers it in a way that no other band currently could. Such a distillation of a tumultuous moment is rare, and the result is an instant classic that makes you believe original ideas do still exist. Whether or not it is the best album of 2025 (it probably is), it is definitely the most 2025 album of 2025 – the record that best captures the fear and chaos of the present. You’ll struggle to find another album this immersive, inventive and wondrously strange all year.
