Reflections on the first songs Geese ever released
When the high school friends behind Geese crowned their musical efforts in a Brooklyn basement, talent was definitely in abundance, but direction was maybe less present.
Speaking as a fan who awaited their Saturday Night Live debut with anticipation, I thoroughly enjoyed the rollercoaster of genres that was their musical infancy. From post-punk to cowboy rock to experimental indie, it’s undeniable that the search for their musical identity took the underground quartet far and wide.
With influences identifiable as anywhere between The Velvet Underground and Funkadelic, their initial albums were diverse, but already fantastic, which started after they formed in 2016, using drummer Max Bassin’s parents’ basement to rehearse, quickly writing and self-producing a debut EP.
Out in 2018, it was promptly followed by A Beautiful Memory the same year, and a third album in 2019, called Bottomless Pink Lagoon. None of these incredible efforts is available on streaming platforms, and almost all of them are obsolete on the internet. I’ve just about been able to excavate the dynamic A Beautiful Memory from YouTube, and its exciting riffs really are brave beyond its years.
Why a group would go as far as to eliminate its history would really imply a disassociation, maybe even an embarrassment of a certain work. Yet after listening to their second album, I have found few differences in style from contemporary Geese. The development of each of the instruments’ fluidity, as well as their grouped compatibility, shows obvious improvement, but that’s the craft of any band’s maturing process.
Considering it was made while its artists were 16 years old, the songs from A Beautiful Memory are melancholic, lyrically intricate, and leave more to be desired. It’s a bit more stripped-back than a lot of later Geese, with less complex change-ups in instrumentation and a more monotonous theme going through. In their youth, the band sounds reserved, with toned-down vocals and less daring topics in its lyrics, but you can tell it’s the same guys from ‘Trinidad’.
The underrated album, like the two others I was unable to find anywhere online, were the reason why so much label attention was suddenly on a group of high schoolers. Although synth-heavy, their early-age textured vein is flawlessly executed, and their visionary track ‘Always’ struck a chord with its inspired likeness to Arctic Monkeys-era British indie. It’s fast, excitable over-inclusion of different elements in ‘Cold’ is synonymous with young, keen creativity, where no idea is a bad idea, and everything gets you stoked.
Music critic Steven Hyden even went as far as calling A Beautiful Memory “the most accomplished music made by high-school sophomores since Alex Chilton sang ‘The Letter’ nearly 50 years ago,” he told Uproxx. There’s credit to reinvention, but when the songs are great, erasing amazing work will only make people want to hear it more.
However, their latest album, Getting Killed, does a great job of exploding their previous musical identities and dumping the corpse into a river on the other side of the world. Their voice is completely renewed, with chaotic dissemblances with what they had already done echoing somewhere in the rearview. Their work is exemplary of what all art should be, changing with the seasons, with age, and with the passing events that all of our lives will host.
