Geese at Paradise Rock Club
Design by Sophie Parrish
By Lucca Swain
Yeah, the show was good. Great, even. And why would anyone but the most steadfast Geese hater be inclined to believe otherwise? Possibly the fastest-rising indie band of the moment, not long into touring their spectacular latest album, with one of modern rock’s most eccentric and most quietly brilliant frontman at the helm, not to mention the intense musical talent of every other member of the band – Geese’s concert at Paradise Rock Club was one primed to succeed, no doubt.
Like the best of bands, Geese possess a thorough understanding of what it is that makes a concert memorable; they know how to get the blood flowing, get the people moving, how to strain the tension in the crowd to the point of bursting, only to let go at the very last moment like a taut rubber band slingshotting away with the force of a jet engine. They’ll push you to the very edge of exasperation, and then pull you right back just to get a rise out of you. Smack-dab in the middle of “Long Island City Here I Come,” just after Cameron Winter’s nonchalant declaration of “I’m about to kick your ass up and down this street,” and right before where the song would have dived headfirst into its hectic refrain of “Here I come” repeated ad infinitum, the song seemingly comes to a halt. What was only a brief moment of reprieve in the studio version instead begins to stretch out, Emily Green’s pointed guitar attack scaling down into a bite-sized, hypnotic rhythm that repeats and repeats and repeats for two, three, maybe even four minutes. It’s impossible to say just how long it went on for, but what is for certain is that it felt like no one on that stage or in that room dared to even breathe. At some point the looping guitar riff starts to dig into your brain, becoming more drone than melody, and you catch yourself thinking, “when is this gonna end?” But it just keeps going and going, and you may even wonder if this is all just a big joke, that the show is going to end and the band will walk offstage before they even reach that cathartic refrain and final verse. But Geese knows full well what they’re doing, because in the microinstant that impatience starts to transition into annoyance, they explode into the long-awaited refrain like nothing even happened, and the whole venue goes nutty. The wait was worth it.
“Long Island City Here I Come” wasn’t the only track to receive a substantial change in form, though. On nearly every song, Geese found a way to scale the drama of their music up to mythic new levels, whether it be by slowing the intro of “Islands of Men” down to a crawl, or giving drummer Max Bassin a whole entire solo smack in the middle of “Bow Down”, or watching the band stand in complete and total silence for who-knows-how-long before launching into the manic “Trinidad.” The excitement factor really went up, though, when the band pulled out several tracks from their previous record 3D Country, which arguably hit even harder live than the Getting Killed material. There really isn’t anything like listening to an entire overcrowded venue sing along to the chorus of “I See Myself,” or watching dozens of moshers violently collide into each other during “2122.”
Perhaps the most fun part of the show was getting to see in person just how tight every individual player was on their instrument. Geese are given a deserved amount of credit for their songcrafting abilities – they make great music, duh – but what is often underdiscussed is just how much of their songwriting rests on their exceptional talent as musicians. Much of the material they played, from “Islands of Men” to “2122” to “Half Real,” is distinctly, disgustingly funky in feel – it’s the kind of music that requires both total confidence in your instrument and a thorough understanding of groove. Being able to watch the band’s rhythm section lock so intensely into Getting Killed’s interminable, hypnotic rhythms has a sort of mesmerizing effect, where the crowd and the noise disappears entirely and all that’s left is the players hammering away at their instruments with the steady precision and ceaselessness of a river murmuring downstream. They can play the faux-shuffle of “Cowboy Nudes” with the charm of the best basement bar bands, while still being able to ratchet the intensity up to eleven on a track like “Long Island City.” From beginning to end, every single song, Geese never take their foot off the gas, not until Cameron Winter’s explosive, cathartic bellowing of, “There’s a bomb in my car,” at the end of “Trinidad.” A show to be remembered, for sure.