The artist Geese could never emulate “in a million years”
2025 seems to have been the year in which the whole world has flocked towards Geese. It’s perhaps a hopeful sign of the times – at long last, have bands finally wrapped a grip around the first rung of the ladder back to the top?
It may still yet be a little too early to tell properly, but you can bet that as far as Geese are concerned, they will be lapping up every ounce of success they can get, after knocking at the door of the industry for the better part of the last decade, and now people are finally listening. Theirs is undoubtedly a story of tenacity and inspiration for the countless groups of kids in bands chipping away at rehearsals in their garage – because one day, it might just happen for them too.
This is something thankfully not yet lost on Cameron Winter and the rest of his band, who throughout their journey as the current flavour of indie rock have often been quick to cite a whole myriad of wide-ranging influences, from The Velvet Underground to The Strokes to The Beatles. But while borrowing from the pillars of this classic library to create something so groundbreaking and equally nostalgic in the scores of today’s landscape, they also know where there are areas of music they simply can’t touch.
Of course, you would never expect a band like Geese to suddenly pivot into bubblegum pop or classical opera; it’s clear that they very much have a lane that they are masters of excelling within. However, you can’t blame them for peering over and studying the notes of the other genres of music that have made up areas of the diversity that we know and love so much today, no matter how different they know their own back catalogue ultimately proves to be.
Yet for a group so heavily lauded right now as paving the way for the next wave of American indie rock, Geese are naturally conscious of the artists they can simply never match up to. Winter explained as much during the band’s most recent interview on Apple Music with Zane Lowe, in which he said: “Everyone who I think is good is doing what they want. You know, I could never do things that certain other people do. I listened to Bob Marley’s lyrics the other day and I was like, ‘I could never in a million years write a song like this and feel good about it lyrically’.”
Asked how a reggae legend like Marley differs from his own style, Winter continued. “He’s got these songs that are, like, super spiritual – the rhyming, like transgression with oppression and connection.” To some, naturally, this is going to seem like an obvious statement to make: after all, an indie band who have only recently risen to prominence cannot square up to the prolific and world-changing heights that Marley mustered, at least in the short term – but there is always room to dream.
In many ways, that is the mark of exactly what will take Geese further than the already exponential heights they are tracking towards. It’s not just the fact that they can reel off a list of other rock bands who have served as guiding lights – at the end of the day, anyone can do that – but it’s the fact that they have the prescience of mind to look in other directions and acknowledge their own space within that landscape. They may never replicate the king of reggae, but they can certainly have a good go at becoming the monarchs of their own league.
