Geese (The Band, Not The Bird) – “Getting Killed” Album Review
Solie Lawson | October 28, 2025
Do you feel that modern music lacks individuality, and you don’t know where to start exploring new music? Geese is a modern American rock band formed in 2016 in Brooklyn, New York. Led by singer-songwriter Cameron Winter, the band also includes Emily Green, Dominic DiGesu, Max Bassin and their keyboardist Sam Revaz, who makes an appearance on live performances. While modern music follows structure and trend, Geese takes on a post-punk sound that flits into other genres. Their new album, “Getting Killed,” hit high ratings across the charts, securing a 9.0 on Pitchfork, and 88 critic score on Album of The Year. While the album can be described as rock, it has folk-indie undertones and a sense of unnerving chaos that is completely its own.
The starting track, “Trinidad,” takes form with Winter’s slow and beautiful vocals backed by simple percussion and a repetitive guitar riff. Then, without warning, the melody escalates to Winter shouting, “There’s a bomb in my car,” with a flux of percussion and a guitar that seems to carry a mind of its own. It makes the listener question what is happening and what situation Winter is singing about, although with the noise, it’s harder to produce a concrete thought than it is to simply feel the rhythm created. It then returns to the same slow tone it took before, with comedic lyrics that strike curiosity. There’s no time to process; you can only experience whatever feeling the band is trying to create. It’s a classic modern rock song, because it doesn’t have the intent to be understandable to the listener, but instead to create this mass of noise. Personally, it is one of my favorite modern rock songs, and my second favorite song on the album. I find myself listening to it frequently, especially when I’m craving that jolt of music that I struggle finding elsewhere.
“Cobra,” the second track on the album, completely flips the tone set by the first track, starting with a muted melody, before unfolding into a joyous mix of guitar that almost carries a child-like feeling to it. A sense of new and exciting wonder and adventure, having the listener immediately hooked. The song is repetitive, one of my favorite lines being, “Baby, you should be ashamed. You should be shame’s only daughter.” While these words feel inherently negative, the song itself feels almost satirical in its lyrics, Winter repeating that he wants to dance away forever. “You can make the cobras dance, but not me.” It’s different from common lyricism; Winter has a mind of his own, and he transmits it through the working muscles of this band. While this song interests me, it is forgettable and not one of my favorites, but I still enjoy listening to the switch of tone of the previous track.
“Husbands” starts with opening percussion that repeats itself often on this album. Winter's lyricism on this track consists of him repeating “Will it wash your hair clean, when your husbands all die? Will you know what I mean?” These tracks aren’t meant to be understood, but digested as they are. This track takes third place on the album for me as it is memorable and individual from the other tracks in its melody.
The title track of the album, “Getting Killed,” is one of my favorites on the album lyrically. The lyrics make more sense on this track, with prolific writing such as: “My love takes a long time, longer than a lover can survive,” “I’m trying to talk over everybody in the world,” and “I can’t even taste my own tears, they fall into an even sadder bastard’s eyes.” Of course then Winter returns to his classical blurry satirical writing that’s almost annoying but impossible for me to hate. While I enjoy the lyricism, the song in fullness doesn’t compare to my favorites.
The fifth song on the album “Islands of Men,” also has lyrics that I thoroughly enjoy. “You can’t keep womankind in your dreams.” This speaks to the traditional conceptualization and objectification of women by men, and how men have named women in their minds without knowing women in actuality and fully. What a beautiful line. The song continues this critique on men, describing the experience of beholding the island of men making the viewer “lazy eyed” and “weak.” I enjoy this song particularly because I can understand it and relate it to my historical and modern knowledge of men and their need for power. It’s amazing to listen to a song and feel the depth of the lyrics in a way that I haven’t before, which makes this song one of my favorites.
“Au Pays du Cocaine,” a fan favorite of the album and my particular favorite, starts off with a sweet melody that holds nostalgic undertones. Winter has lyrics that impact the listener with a warm sort of melancholy, with phrases like “You can stay with me and just pretend I’m not there,” and “Baby you can change and still choose me.” With relatable lyrics like this, it makes sense why it’s the most popular on the album, because it has the most digestible theme to the modern listener, who is used to a clear story and clear structure. This song isn’t about creating a mass of noise and feeling like many of the other tracks, but instead focuses on the feeling of change in relationship and how to adapt to it. I’ve seen many uses of this song over edited clips of sad films, and therefore it makes it all the more personal because I can see stories and movies that have this repeated theme of the devastation of change and how it impacts connections.
“Taxes” is another one of my favorite tracks on the album. Winter talks about not wanting to pay his own taxes, doctors healing themselves, and how he will break his own heart from now on, emphasizing his need for control in an uncontrollable society. Why this is my favorite song is because of how the instrumentals lead up to a familiar flux that almost holds a coming-of-age ring, and Winter's beautiful harmonies.
The last song on the album, “Long Island City,” follows a fast pace as he discusses not knowing where to go, and the different people that occupy this neighborhood in Queens, NYC. It’s a perfect finishing track, a mass of noise that encompasses the bustling sidewalks of walking in a crowded city. I did enjoy this song, as the noise and the theme felt familiar to the long winding story Winter creates with his music and lyrics. Winter's indirect imagery on this song, and on the whole album, is unsurpassable.
There were songs on this album I didn’t mention because they didn’t hold as much value to me as the others. “100 Horses”, the sixth track on the album, tells the story of a soldier, and while this is an interesting take, it didn’t particularly strike a chord with me. I didn’t like nor dislike it, but it didn’t feel as thought out as the other songs. “Half Real” also feels like a filler song, and while I can enjoy Winter's take on his separation from reality and relationship, it isn’t a song that feels personal to me and therefore it is forgettable. The ninth track on the album, “Bow Down” is repetitive and in my opinion the most dislikable track.
“Getting Killed” is an album I would rate a near perfect score as its individualism makes it stand out in the midst of new albums. It doesn’t follow a definable structure, nor a definable plot, but nevertheless, that’s why listeners should enjoy it more. In the midst of sameness, and the need to produce something digestible to the masses, Geese sticks to its own genre, creating a modern sound never heard before. A body of noise and feeling and ideas, it truly is one of a kind, and I would recommend it to any music lovers out there as Geese has come to be one of my favorite bands of the millennium.