Photo by Mark Sommerfeld

You’ve got rock icons who got their start riding a sea of buzz themselves hailing them as a second third fourth fifth sixth(?) coming of rock saviordom. The hype (or is it well funded publicity?) machine behind the young NYC band’s acclaimed new album has them in the news cycle every single goddamn week. Someone behind a dog food balloon during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade even snuck a song of theirs in front of your boomer parents, and to be fair, your boomer parents probably just thought it was a Springsteen song. The big question is: is what’s good for the Geese good for the gander when it comes to the music itself?

That’s been the struggle on these pages since Geese released their third studio album, Getting Killed, back in late September, as it seems like social media just won’t shut the fuck up about them. The noise wears you down and it’s hard to listen to an artist fairly outside of that vacuum without a negative bias, but on this Thanksgiving Day, let’s give thanks to the ability to play the long game with patience and considering art on whatever we define as our own terms, because today is the day that +rcmndedlisten can really say: those Geese kids aren’t so bad after all.

So get in, asshole. Let’s drive and start the goodwill on the Geesedom by acknowledging that the album’s highlight “Trinidad” is an all-timer when it comes to openers while setting a high bar for everything that comes after it (obviously, they don’t faulter.) If you’re going to be accused of saving rock music, you better be doing something to appease the nostalgia of anyone born before 1962 but speaks to the influence of anyone born after 2002. Vocalist, guitarist and keyist Cameron Winter, guitarist Emily Green, bassist Dominic DiGesu, and drummer Max Bassin speak to both generations, edging their way in with a stoned out, earthy crunchy skronk in its buildup that makes you think you’re in store for some real jam band shit. Next thing you know, you’re swerving into some bastardized free-jazz-noise-rap lane, and JPEGMafia is there in the backseat for some reason shouting, “There’s a bomb in my car!” The whole thing just keeps ticking in your head well past the point of this whole damn press hype explosion. If it hasn’t stuck with you yet, just know that it will, eventually.

Geese’s Getting Killed is available now on Partisan Records / Play It Again Sam.