Somewhere between a panic attack and a religious experience, Geese recorded Getting Killed in ten fast-paced days with producer Kenny Beats, and it sounds like they were racing against the end of the world—or maybe trying to beat it. It took me a while to dive into Geese. I basically avoided ’cause everyone told me I had to listen to them, and my social media was inundated with their performances; honestly, it still is.
But Getting Killed is an album that sounds like the house is on fire and the occupants decided to play the best show of their lives while it burns them up. “Trinidad” opens with nightmarish lyrics about dead daughters and bombs in cars, with lead singer Cameron Winter screaming over an unruly psych blues jam and Ukrainian choir samples layer beneath garage riffs while hissing drum machines pulse behind screeching guitars, creating a sonic architecture that stands like a skyscraper built from anxiety and adrenaline.
Throughout Getting Killed, Winter’s voice shape-shifts between registers—falsetto prayers, guttural screams, deadpan observations—as if he’s channelling every possible emotion simultaneously and letting them fight for dominance.
The album feels like a carefully constructed fever dream, a transcript of American decline. “Husbands” asks how many have to die, questioning whether maintaining the status quo is worth losing so many people. On the title track, Winter warbles “I’m getting killed by a pretty good life.” “Au Pays du Cocaine” emerges as a soul stunner, a ‘let’s-stay-together’ update for our disconnected and discontented era. The band celebrates the magic of rhythm and creative repetition, radicalizing the conventional with insurrectional and experimental flair.
