The ultimate beginner’s guide to being a Geese-hating contrarian
You’ve seen 15 headlines in a row hailing Geese as the new saviours of rock ‘n’ roll, and because you’re a right miserable bastard, you’re not having any of it.
At this early stage, hating Geese is a stance very few have dared to take. You’re up against it. You probably have to go back to the dawn of Fontaines DC to find the last time such consistent cheering has adorned a guitar band. Geese and their wiry frontman, Cameron Winter, are the unrivalled darlings of the alternative world right now.
They’re unique. Max Bassin offers a drum sound that could tear a hole in the Ozone layer. Emily Green offers melodic guitar lines that could patch that hole back up. Winter’s words teeter on the brink between cuttingly vital and wholly obfuscated, typifying the poetic technique of: show, don’t tell.
But amid that organic originality, towering artistic supremacy, and titanic hits like the shimmering ‘Taxes’, there are a few jabs that a Geese-hating beginner might be able to land if you are contrarianly inclined.
Firstly, you’re going to have to reconcile what you’re up against. Any time Courtney Love is expressing admiration for anything other than herself, it is a clear indication that the hype is insurmountable and relatively unimpeached. Unlike the flawed Brat summer, this won’t be an easy hype train to attempt to derail.
That leads up to the second step. You need to arm yourself with facts. In the face of fanatics, this is always essential. Perhaps the primary chink in their armour is the disconnect between being hailed as the new saviours of rock ‘n’ roll and the fact that Geese get fewer monthly listens on Spotify than Jamelia.
In fact, they almost get four times fewer than the bloody Kooks, and the top 17 Google results for an image search of ‘Geese’ are birds. ‘Size isn’t everything,’ ardent fans will no doubt reply, and, well, that speaks for itself. You simply have to chuckle and wink like a triggering prick.
Carry On jokes aside, size isn’t everything and some of the hype that the band have received is not borne from a sense of impending mega-success, but rather the fervour of those inspired by their innovative sound. And that leads you onto the next obvious point of attack: the fucking caterwauling sound of Cameron Winter’s vocal wail.
‘Enough with the self-indulgent screaming, son. If Robert Plant’s bellow could stir honey into tea from a thousand paces, then Winter’s whimpering simply curdles milk,’ you might quip. And the ubiquity of it offers you an open goal, too. ‘If whining on like a dog in dire pain is an avant-garde example of unfiltered expression, then why is it deployed so often,’ you might want to ask.
Once again, you’ll be met with the rebuttal of uniqueness. Perhaps an intellectual Geese lover might even explain that impassioned wailing, even in otherwise pleasant songs, is a Duchampian response to a world gone awry, and how difficult it is to commit to purely blue sky thinking. In some ways, this pre-empts your next suitable line of attack: the old ‘forced weirdness’ critique.
It’s certainly worth asking, ‘At what point do sudden experimental outbursts just become a contrived refusal to fully commit to a tune?’ Sure, writing a straight song might now be deemed old hat in the performatively art-house worlds of Camden and Brooklyn, but try zig-zaging off a cliff to prove you’re interesting in a social club – while the masses in dire need of invigorated connection lend their ears – and you’ll either clear the room or be drowned out by calls to put The Killers back on.
At this stage, you may well have been irritating enough to pry the defeated head-shaking response of, ‘Ah, you just don’t get it.’ That’s a good sign. Against all odds, and unjustly, you’re on top. It is what you live for. The underdog triumph of upholding a disruptive or even destructive alternative to the norm is yours to bask in.
Now, you turn not on Geese, but their fans. Oddly enough, your old adversary, Courtney Love, has become your proverbial Italy. “I want to talk a little bit about their fans,” she recently wrote while praising the group. “Their gatekeeping elder millennial troll fans. I love my trolls, but the Geese trolls are like another kettle of fish.”
Her point is not entirely clear, but perhaps you can sharpen the sentiment that only a certain ilk are allowed to truly call themselves Geesciples and highlight the sheer ubiquity of Salomon sneakers in their crowds and the fact that plenty people seem to be donning fresh out of the box Projector T-shirts in a cunning bid to try and convince people that they’ve been listening since 2021.
Surely, some of the avidness of this evangelism is performative? You might even want to ask them to name a single song from Projector – as you often do – and if no answer follows, you might want to question the sincerity of their fandom.
And don’t think too much about whether you might be the self-same inverse. Don’t question the validity of the ’other’ that you stand for. That’s never a good contrarian move.
