I just don’t want to like them. Everybody loves Geese. Everybody loves their new album, Getting Killed. Everybody seems to be falling down stupid-in-love with their singer and principal songwriter, Cameron Winter. Even people whose opinions I trust and whose art I respect or love, St. Vincent and Marc Maron, as examples, are falling over backwards for Geese.
Listen. I pride myself on being open to new music. And I am not so snobby as to dismiss a band or a songwriter just because everybody else seems to love them. So, to make sure I do not fall victim to either a kind of closed-mindedness or a snobbery against anything popular, I think I have done my homework. I have listened to Getting Killed three times all the way through. I have listened to Heavy Metal, Cameron Winter’s solo record all the way through once. Let me see if I can articulate how I feel.
First of all, let me first list some things that I actually do admire about the Geese kids. They are not tied to traditional song structures or notions about what a rock song must include or sound like. Their structures, insofar as they exist, seem free-wheeling, and even though they are probably not, have the vibe or sense of being improvised, at least partially. This is more true on some songs than it is on others. They are objectively “good” musicians. They can play their instruments. They make bold musical decisions. The first track on the album, “Trinidad,” is essentially one musical groove or riff. It’s somewhat rhythmically complex, is a kind of a cool but odd groove, and it’s punctuated throughout by these cacophonous moments, where all hell breaks loose on every instrument, and Winter is just screaming at the top of his lungs. It’s not a nice sound. To open an album with this level of experimentation and a kind of cavalier attitude for the listener’s level of comfort, is brave, a courageous move. I enjoy Cameron Winter’s lyrics, impressionistic, bizarre, full of non-sequitur, sometimes funny, and his singing style, while aspects of it are familiar, is unique, eccentric, unusual, surprising, and emotive. I admire that, but in this particular case: I don’t like it.
And maybe this is the deciding factor for me. There’s too much Winter. There’s too much vibrato. As one hilarious instagram reel recently suggests, he sounds like he’s riding a roller coaster. There’s too little melodic information–he will often just hover for a long time over a single note or a few notes pretty close together. When there is a clear melody, while it might be nice, it’s not necessarily skillful, complex, or unique. Sometimes, it feels like he might be singing wrong notes deliberately. And often, in one of his emotive moments, he just seems to be howling or chanting. He also appears to make some of the same melodic moves from song to song. Lastly, he seems to kind of overwhelm the rest of the band. And I understand that all of these descriptors might be the very things that a lot of people love about his singing, and as a singer and songwriter myself, I don’t know that I wouldn’t be guilty of some of these things in my own performances. I guess I would just say that the band and Cameron Winter’s notoriety and seemingly unanimous critical praise make them fair game for a dissenting opinion. After the third listen, I can recall only one melody–and that’s the refrain line or the chorus from “Au Pays du Cocaine”: “Like a sailor in a big green boat/Like a sailor in a big green coat/ You can be free/You can be free/ and still come home/It’s alright/I’m alright.” That one is stuck in my head, while nearly nothing else from the album is.
Listen, don’t get me wrong. I am happy for these young musicians. And I am pleased that a group this unusual is making such a huge splash. I am only a little bit surprised and puzzled about the level of enthusiasm about them. In today’s current climate, yeah, they are unique, but in the entirety of the rock band canon, they are not. My final assessment is that, while I admire them, I don’t enjoy listening, and I think, against most everyone else’s opinion, that they are overrated.
michael jarmer 