Listening to Geese’s Getting Killed

Not everyday you’d come across a band that took the world by storm to that point that people have labeled them (not an industry plant but) a Psy-Op orchestrated by the powers that be.

Especially, a band that on paper shouldn’t have that mass of an appeal, the vocals don’t “stereotypically” sound good, lyrics that aren’t catchy in any sort of ‘pop music’ kind of way.

Mind you this sudden and unexpected surge in popularity did not arrive unopposed, many of the people online who didn’t really resonate with the music are questioning why people are liking it and even IF people actually like it, hence the Psy-Op allegations.

However, I feel like this is simply signifying a shift in the collective tastes of people at large, but before we get into that let’s get more acquainted with Geese the band.

Geese formed a full decade ago in 2016, releasing their now -scrubbed of the internet- first album (independently) in 2018 titled A Beautiful Memory.

Listening to this album now (through YouTube or SoundCloud) you do get some glimpses of how good this band can become, behind very rough production and the reverb drenched vocals of Cameron Winter.

Weirdly enough, I prefer this extremely  rough album to its more polished younger sibling and their ‘technically’ debut album Projector (shout-out to Fawaz the owner of Bohemia for introducing me, he really is a depressed white man music connoisseur).

Although Projector was not by any means a bad album, it didn’t really resonate with me and it didn’t feel unique in any way to me, ‘oh another new young band, cool’, but that was the extent of it. I wasn’t hooked like I was with Black Midi or Black Country, New Road, and I don’t think I am alone in my feelings towards this album.

Unfortunately that resulted in their follow-up album 2023 ‘3D Country’ slipping through my radar, and THAT album would have definitely hooked me.

I was aware of the album’s existence, I just wasn’t in any hurry to listen to it given how unmemorable Projector was to me. And so 3D Country continued to allude me until GUNSHOT…. ‘Getting Killed’ has arrived in September of 2025, and it seemed for a few weeks that is all anyone in Instagram’s music was talking about (or most likely meme’ing, especially due to the release being close to Charlie Kirk’s death, I’ll let you connect the dots on that one).

I was eager to know what all the fuss was about, and man, this was not a case of all smoke and no fire, this was an active volcano and i was willingly throwing myself in it.

I can’t really explain how listening to the album for the first time made me feel, the only word I can use is ‘entranced’.

The first track Trinidad screams ‘There’s a bomb in my car’ and boy did it feel like it. It was loud, honest, oddly vulnerable. And just as you think Trinidad will set the tone for the rest of the album, we transition to Cobra’s bittersweet and loving tone.

The album feels extremely diverse without feeling like its not carrying over a theme throughout, and the lyrical content of Getting Killed amongst the rest of their discography feels very personal, intimate and vulnerable.

From tackling themes of anxiety, gender dysphoria, the crushing weight of a ”pretty good life”, and political commentary on war.

I ended up listening to the album on repeat for a while to digest it all and even the tracks I was not the most excited about (Husbands, Half Real, and Taxes) became essential and unskippable to me.

Although Cameron Winter’s solo album ‘Heavy Metal’ came out nearly a year prior to the band’s new hit record, It inadvertently got the spotlight due to ‘Getting Killed’s popularity. Further resonating with younger fans due to how vulnerable of an album it is.

Whether you have heard of Geese (or the other mentioned bands) or not, the cultural impact is very noticeable, be it from music circles, other musicians and bands, or even names like Paul Thomas Anderson who shot Cameron Winter’s (Geese Frontman) solo show at Carnegie Hall, which is set to be shown across theaters in the US (I am very jealous), alongside a live album of that concert.

A milestone feat for a 23 year old musician to headline at that venue, making him one of the youngest to do so.

Now going back to the change of collective tastes, It seems like a very big chunk of people (manly of the younger generations) have fallen out of love with the overly processed sound, formulaic  structure, and ”unchallenging” lyrics. Songs feel engineered to become commercial successes in a lab, with writing credits that are a few pages long. That’s before brining AI into the picture.

There is a push to embrace our imperfect and “adventurous” side as human beings, a sense of raw naturalistic expression. This brings to mind one of my favorite albums of all time, The Glow pt.2 by The Microphones, an album that to me embodies many aspects of the same spirit I just mentioned.

This has lead to the rise of other surprise hits like the eccentric and chaotic Angine de Poitrine whose entire existence seems to be a reaction to the emergence of AI and the fleeting idea of what is human and what isn’t.

This idea of AI “art” v s Human art is one that seems somewhat absurd by most sane people but the truth is, the future is rather bleak. And although I truly believe that the majority of people would still gravitate towards the real. But the truth is our lives might get extremely saturated with AI generated music, be it in commercials, malls, or even mainstream movies soon enough.

Not to prolong this AI rant any further but just as a suggestion I would recommend watching the anime Carole & Tuesday which imagines this sort of future (although a lot less bleak than I imagine the future to be).

Although bands like Geese, Angine de Poitrine, and Wednesday are not topping charts and aren’t household names yet (and they may never be), I do feel like this would be the mark of the one of the first domino pieces to fall, signaling a possible ”decommercialization” of the music industry (even if slightly).