Geese — Getting Killed (2025)
By Rafi Mercer
There are albums that arrive neatly explained, already packaged with a narrative you’re expected to agree with. And then there are albums that feel slightly dangerous to pin down — records that move too quickly, change their mind halfway through a sentence, and leave you unsure whether you’ve been entertained, unsettled, or quietly understood. Getting Killed lives firmly in that second category.
What strikes me first, listening back over time rather than on impact, is how deliberately alive this album feels. Not polished-alive, not industry-alive — but human-alive. The kind of life that’s messy, impulsive, occasionally awkward, and deeply alert to its surroundings. This is not a band smoothing out its edges in search of longevity. It’s a band leaning into the idea that edges are where meaning still happens.
Geese don’t treat songs as finished objects so much as evolving states. Tracks lurch, twist, snap into moments of clarity, then dissolve again. At first this can feel confrontational — as if the album is testing your patience. But with time, the restlessness reveals itself as intent. This is music shaped by a world that refuses to sit still, by minds that are overstimulated yet still reaching for sincerity.
Cameron Winter’s voice is central to this. It doesn’t present itself as a fixed persona; it behaves more like an exposed nerve. Sometimes playful, sometimes strained, sometimes startlingly tender, it carries the feeling that the thought is forming as it’s being spoken. That immediacy is rare. Too many modern records sound like conclusions. Getting Killed sounds like process.
There’s also a deep understanding of tension at work here — not just loud versus quiet, but density versus space. The band know when to let things sprawl and when to pull them back just enough for the listener to breathe. Beneath the theatrical flourishes and sudden pivots, there’s a surprising amount of control. Chaos, yes — but guided chaos, shaped by instinct rather than accident.
Over the long arc, what stays with me isn’t the shock of any single moment, but the album’s emotional precision. Beneath the humour, the abrasion, and the occasional grotesque exaggeration, there’s a persistent vulnerability. This feels like a record made by people trying to stay honest in a culture that rewards irony more than truth. The humour isn’t there to deflect feeling — it’s there because feeling, left unguarded, can be overwhelming.
As a listening experience, Getting Killed benefits from commitment. Played front to back, on a system that lets texture and midrange grit come through, it reveals its architecture. You notice how physical it is — the way drums occupy space, how guitars scrape rather than shimmer, how silence is used not as a pause but as a pressure point. This isn’t background music. It demands presence, and it gives something back when you offer it.
In the end, the album feels like a document of its moment — not in a generational slogan sense, but in a more intimate way. It captures the feeling of thinking too much, caring too deeply, and laughing at yourself just to stay upright. That combination is hard to fake, and harder still to sustain across a full record.
Getting Killed doesn’t ask to be liked immediately. It asks to be lived with. And in a culture increasingly built around instant reaction, that alone feels quietly defiant.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters.
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