It’s been a month since the New York-based rock band Geese released their new album, Getting Killed, and people are still yapping about it. I’m yapping about it. Why? Maybe it’s the frontman, Cameron Winter. Winter’s voice can’t stay in one place for long. He slips between a lounge singer’s croon, his best Jagger impression, and outright screaming. He plumbs brassy depths and climbs tenuous peaks, his voice wavering, threatening to break at any moment. On each track he sounds improvisational and unpredictable, but he always ends up exactly where needs to be—the right note, the right timbre, the right emotion. This isn’t just luck.
On Geese’s 3D Country, released in 2023, Winter lets loose, but to mixed results. The album is replete with charming vocal acrobatics, but the ironic country twang Winter (a Brooklynite) occasionally adopts is more alienating than engaging. Sure, it can be fun, but it also produces a satirical distance between Winter and the listener, with the drama and potential impact of the lyrics getting lost in the process. This distance seeps into the instrumentation as well, producing songs that are technically and creatively all there, but nonetheless feel like facsimiles. Last year, Cameron Winter corrected course with a solo album, Heavy Metal. Heavy Metal is warm and inviting and unabashed in its sincerity. Winter lives in these songs. He sings, trembling, from a little nest he’s assembled out of plaintive then playful keys, gentle strumming, saccharine orchestral strings, and a rich bass always plodding along, keeping you company.
Geese has coaxed some of this sincerity and gentle spirit into Getting Killed, without losing the vigor of 3D Country. With that said, the opening track, “Trinidad,” is a bit of a red herring. Winter begins with a breathy falsetto. Backing him: a steady hi-hat, one guitar interjecting with the same slippery two note phrase, another guitar sticking the occasional, crisp strum, and an all-business horn, blurting just for punctuation. This can only last so long before the song rends itself in two: the drums come crashing down, Winter screams, “There’s a bomb in my car!” and the mix shatters, the song bouncing between left and right channels, instruments cutting in and out. In the chaos, the horn wanders, the guitars squall. The song manages to collect itself, shatter again, and collect itself once more. In the tension before the final collapse, Winter raves with the desperation and fervor of a lunatic driver calling into a late-night radio show: “My son is in bed / My daughters are dead / My wife’s in the shed / My husband’s burning lead / The rest are force-fed or else baked into bread.” The song destroys itself once more.
The tracks that follow never touch the sonic mania of “Trinidad,” but they’re all the better for it. The rest of the album is a densely woven mesh of ideas that nonetheless feels light, loose, and most of all, ecstatic. The rhythm section is often patterned and eclectic, but always driving. On “Husbands,” the groove revolves around thumping bass drum, but is speckled with rim shots, muted guitar plucking, and a patter of bongos. The opening of “Taxes” also features a complex rhythm arrangement, but it is so aqueous and resounding that the song’s sudden leap into a pop ballad feels that much more tight and energetic. “Bow Down” starts simple enough but amps into its finale with shakers, claps, and the most tasteful cowbell. The bass takes a simpler approach. Its rumbling, fuzzy presence bubbles up in the sunny, inexorably catchy pop of “Cobra,” and rollicking blues of “100 Horses.” On “Islands of Men,” it adds that perfect decadent undertone to a swaying, sauntering song already intoxicated on itself.
Apart from the crunch and fuzz of the title track “Getting Killed” and the aforementioned “100 Horses,” Geese try to keep their guitar tone clean, producing melodies often as simple as they are scintillating. The guitar on “Au Pays du Cocaine,” chimes like a music-box before yielding to mounting piano. On top of the stellar percussion of “Husbands,” a lead guitar establishes a core, pensive phrase while a second guitar provides single note stings; under this pattern, the song inexorably, but seemingly with all the patience in the world, proceeds towards its emotional climax.
Bringing it all together is, of course Winter’s voice, which shines through in all these small moments of brilliance. Departing from the screaming and prognosticating on “Trinidad,” Winter opens “Cobra” with the sultriest “Baby…” recorded since Elvis (one can almost imagine Winter in the signature white jump suit, the rhinestones glistening under stagelights). At a loss for words on “Islands of Men,” he emits a virile “unhh,” a perfect rock star inflection that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Later on the same song, Winter’s voice burbles through a vocoder—it’s the same star, now barely heard above the chatter of a boozy backstage afterparty. Winter doesn’t simply imitate his idols, he surpasses them. But elsewhere he bucks the bravado and virility: the coyish entreaties of “Au Pays du Cocaine,” the wailing refrain of “Falling apart, falling apart” that concludes “Husbands,” and a broken, half-spoken, half-sung passage in “Half Real” where Winter considers getting a lobotomy.
Across the album, Winter embodies the spurned and conflicted lover. He calls out to a nameless someone we’ll never get to know. In some places, there is a straightforward love narrative. Winter reflects on a defunct relationship on “Half Real,” concluding “They may say that our love / Was half real / But that’s only half true.” On “Au Pays du Cocaine,” he still sees some hope: “Baby you can change and still choose me.” But it can’t always be this simple. While Getting Killed quickly forgets the sound of “Trinidad,” the song’s apocalyptic vision is sublimated into the rest of the album. As the possibility of love wavers, Winter turns toward an unknown horizon within himself—doom or salvation just beyond.
“Husbands” is soaked in romantic yearning, yet Winter ultimately embraces the alternative, deciding “And if my loneliness should stay / Well, some are holiest that way.” Maybe it is holiness or some higher power that he’s really after, but it could just be a sober substitute for love. The possibility of religious salvation appears doubtful on “Bow Down,” a track shot through with Christian imagery. The order of heaven has collapsed; now, the angels have gone undercover or else bow down to “Maria’s bones,” the earthly remains of the Virgin Mary, relics thrown aside. Winter’s foray into spirituality isn’t faring much better than his love life, and so he rejects it too. While instrumentally bright, “Taxes” sees Winter envisioning his own crucifixion on charges of tax evasion. At the close of the song, Winter resembles the impenitent thief crucified alongside Christ—the thief who asked not for mercy, but only asked why the Messiah couldn’t even save himself. Winter scorns help and strikes off on his own, resolving, “Doctor! Doctor! Heal yourself / And I will break my own heart / I will break my own heart from now on.” Winter is done seeking salvation in the other; he must turn to himself, breaking his own heart if has too.
This brings us to the final track, “Long Island City Here I Come.”A piano pulses like a ramping heartbeat before a flatline. The bongos are back, but rapid now. As we barrel ahead, Winter looks for one last escape, a way out of his own self. He prays to his saints: Joan of Arc and Buddy Holly. The voice of Joan arrives atop thick bass and thudding toms. She speaks like a star’s agent, “The lord has a lot of friends, and in the end / He’ll probably forget he’s ever met you before.” Winter turns to Buddy Holly, ditching the stage name and calling him “Charles” like an old friend. Charles can’t help much either. Winter presses on, defiant now and threatening, maybe against Charles, maybe against God himself, “Like Joshua kick-kick-kicked the king out of Jericho / I’m about to kick your ass up and down the street.” The piano slips away briefly for a guitar and bass bridge.
When the piano returns, it returns with a vengeance, keys buckling under the force of the player. The drumming is frenetic, bouncing between every piece of the kit, trying to find the right fill before it’s all over. Winter pushes on, carving his own heaven out of his hometown: Long Island City. With confidence, he decides “Until I get home, I am not anyone / Long Island City, here I come.” He can’t stop now. Still, in our final moments with him, Winter’s confidence slips for just a second. He admits, “I have no idea where I’m going.” The band rages on. The maelstrom threatens to swallow him whole. Where else is there to turn? Nowhere. He takes the leap: “Here I come.”
