It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Geese at the Kilby Block Party
Show Review ★ Nash Jones ★ @_nash_jones ★ 2430 words
“Can you see it?” Max, a parkour instructor from Canada, hops onto the barrier in response, facing the mass of people. I’m referring to the end of the crowd that has gathered at Kilby Block Party’s Desert Stage in anticipation for Geese’s set. “There’s gotta be like four thousand people,” he says in response. There are still 45 minutes until the experimental rock band is set to take the stage. I’m not accustomed to the attitude of a Geese crowd, as the only other time I’d seen them had been as a supporting act for Greta Van Fleet. Their crowd was friendly, though, chatting casually about their favorite songs by the band— “Mysterious Love, Domoto, and Disco,” I tell them— passing around cigarettes and joking with one another. The casual attitude is a direct juxtaposition from how wild the crowd gets once the music starts, though. Geese hails from New York City, comprised of Cameron Winter on vocals, Emily Green on lead guitar, Dominic DiGesu on bass, Max Bassin on drums, and keys player Sam Revaz. The band has hugely established themselves over the last few years, particularly with their genre-spanning critically-acclaimed sophomore album “3D Country,” released in 2023. Since then, the band has done headlining tours in the US and Europe, several tours as a supporting group, and a slew of festivals.
That brings us back to Kilby, where thousands of people are packed in front of the stage long before the show is set to take place. Winter appears in the wings pointing a camera toward the crowd, grinning and waving. The audience cheered then, but the sound when the band came out to start was rapturous. They began with a track the group had been starting all of their sets with recently, although currently unreleased. Titled “Islands of Men,” the song comes off as one of the band’s more casual tracks— if you can call anything Geese does “casual.” DiGesu began the song on a pair of bongos, Bassin watching attentively before starting by lightly tapping the hi-hats, Green shaking out her hair and coming in with the main riff, DiGesu joining in with the bass. Winter’s voice rings out, dropping from an airy falsetto to a croon with ease. The frontman moves with awkward stoicism, in a way that captivates a crowd.
“Islands of Men” served as a housewarming before jumping right into the chaos that is “2122,” the opening track from “3D Country.” The catchy tune leans more into hard rock, with the audience immediately creating a pit, running at one another as they chanted along to the lyrics “God of the sun, I’m taking you down on the inside!” It was instantly made clear that I was going to need to hang on if I wanted to stay where I was, or otherwise get swept up in the crowd. I chose to stay in my spot and was periodically absolutely crushed against the barrier, left with some gnarly bruises on my forearms and thighs. I saw the metal of the barricade bow at times throughout the set, and although the idea of it giving seemed like a rather terrifying possibility, it held.
Shot By: Julia Montejano @fromjulslens
“Mysterious Love” was another track that the crowd really rocked out to. With an ominous-sounding guitar riff, the first verse compares a relationship to a car crash, ending with the line, “Twenty pounds of glass in my eye!” Although the song was performed faster than the studio version, the band themselves seemed unhurried. Geese embody a wide array of juxtapositions, which draws a large and unique audience. While some lines in the song are screamed in the recorded version, Winter opted to speak them live instead— but the audience was more than willing to be the ones to scream the chorus.
Geese’s audience is compelled to move, along with me, which is uncommon. At most live shows, I am comparatively stiller than most audience members. This has to do, partially, with a hypermobility disorder. I exert a lot of unconscious energy into reserving the space I have so that I’m able to stretch a little. After the first two days of the festival, my lower body was screaming at me, but by day four I had become somewhat accustomed to the lack of space. Secondly, It’s more difficult for me to play the part of “an involved audience member” when I feel obligated to do so. But there is an ease in the chaos of the crowd and a nonchalance exuded by the band’s wild performance. Winter does not hold the mic out expectantly where the choral vocals go during the track “3D Country,” yet the audience sings them. He doesn’t tell the crowd to jump, yet they sure fucking do. Honestly, if you’ve ever seen me at a show, you might question if I’m having a good time. (I am, I promise, I just express things a little differently,) But Geese make that answer visually obvious— I’m having a blast. At no other show have I felt the movement, the jumping, the unbridled screaming of “fuck yeahhhhh!” come as naturally as the way it does in a Geese audience.
The next tune the band played was a second unreleased song, called “Cocaine” as shorthand, supposedly titled “Au Pays du Cocaine.” However, it may not be anymore, as it has changed considerably during the time they’ve toured with it. Winter picked up an acoustic for this one, “From our newer, more sensitive direction,” he quipped dryly, also joking “This is why you should never change your sound,” as the group dealt with technical difficulties for a moment. Winter wasn’t exaggerating when he called the song sensitive, though. A winding and melancholy main riff rang from Green’s amp and Revaz played out some jazzy keys. They’ve also toured with this song previously, though many of the lyrics have changed during this current set of shows. Sweet and longing– yet in some ways heartbreaking– Winter describes the absence of a loved one like a sailor at sea, while still encouraging them to go off and find themselves. “You can stay with me and just pretend I’m not there/ Like a sailor in a big green boat/ Like a sailor in a big green boat/ You can be free/ You can be free and still come home/ It’s alright.”
This unreleased track was followed by several other love songs of theirs, “I See Myself,” and “Cowboy Nudes.” They are love songs in the Geese way though, not the grand piano ballads that would typically be thought of as love songs. These upbeat tracks had the crowd dancing, shouting along to the choruses– “I see myself in you,” and “Be my warrior! My love and light,” being echoed by hundreds– and climbing up to surf atop the tightly-packed audience. The band’s instrumentation is impeccable, and they have a real vision. Blending elements of jazz and blues to create this amazing duo of tracks, this was a real highlight of the set. “I See Myself” is so full of personality, with some jazzy guitar parts and an amazing post-chorus breakdown. “Cowboy Nudes” is an incredibly danceable track with a really grooving bass riff and some funky vocalizations.
Geese went on to play two unreleased tracks in a row. Around half of their set was unreleased tracks, an unusual move, but Geese makes bold and unusual choices. These tracks may also not have the “unreleased” status for much longer, as Winter has said a new Geese album is coming soon. “Bow Down” was the first of these two tracks played. With Bassin’s succinct hits of the toms and Green’s concise strums, it could almost come off as a march, which is fitting for the song’s title. Like “Cocaine,” the track has made a lyrical evolution, and also appears to reference the aforementioned song with the first line, “I was a sailor/ I was a sailor, and now I’m a boat.” It is vivid and commanding, with lines like, “...With an angel down my throat/ She said you have no idea what it’s like/ To bow down, bow down, to the power…” During another part of the song, Winter sings something about this angel referring to those who “sit on Solomon’s throne.” Religious references are far from unheard of in Geese’s lyricism, and Winter’s work overall. At the end of this verse, the instruments pulled back to just Green strumming her guitar and DiGesu tapping the bongos before a huge, powerful breakdown kicks in. Hands flew across fretboards, Revaz pounded the keys, and Bassin batted at his set, all as the final lines rang out, “You have no idea what it’s like/ To bow down, bow down, bow down, bow down/ Bow down, bow down, bow down, bow down/ Bow down to the power of love!” Live performances of some form or another of “Bow Down” go back as far as 2019, when the group were teenagers. They clearly knew it was something special to be playing it and working on it for all this time because this song is an awe-inspiring experience.
“Gravity Blues” was what they played next, a funky tune about wanting to float away from the rest of the world, full of existentialism. There are short, precise plucks at the guitars and the bass reverberates through your feet. Winter croons, “Sorry my love, I am leaving this world,” while later questioning, “Do they stay forever, all the motionless days?” Near the end of the track, the music gets more flowy as the lyrics plainly state the narrator “Floating, floating away/ Goodbye.” Though despondent at times, “Gravity Blues” is picturesque, and aligns very well with the album cover for 3D Country. The sound of the track could put you dashing through dirt trails, surrounded by the greenery of the countryside. While this song illustrates feeling held back by the world, the next song they played followed a similar concept, though went about it in a very different way.
The instrumentation in “Getting Killed” is fun and bombastic, while the lyrics are a stark contrast. The beginning is an explosion of sound, before pulling back to where the lines lay everything bare. Winter has a distinct writing style, which comes through clearly in this track. “My love takes a long time/ Longer than a lover can survive/ Morning, walk me out of here with no shoes on/ and one foot doesn’t want to stay alive.” With sparse but cracking drums and delicate plinks of keys, the instrumentation in the verses aligns with the lyrics more than the chorus does, during which the volume returns in full swing. It’s very rock and roll, yet very bleak. “I am being fucking destroyed by this city tonight/ Getting killed by a pretty good life,” are the final lines of the track, while the instruments play on. In all its crashes of the drums and movement of the bassline and riffing guitars, however, there is something intrinsically delicate and melancholy under it all.
An important distinction about Geese is that they are performers. Of course, they are vocalists and instrumentalists—which they are incredibly skilled at— but the essence of performance is intention and certainty in one’s art. The projection of that feeling draws a crowd, and gets the energy up, gets them chanting your lyrics and running at each other in a pit. Geese know what they’re doing more than just what to play on their instruments, and that is made incredibly clear by their live performances.
The title track on their sophomore album, “3D Country,” was the second-to-last song of the set. Someone could very well hear this tune and be reminded of The Rolling Stones or Steely Dan. The keys lay the foundation of the instrumentation in the live performances, which is an uptempo blues rock, with the lyrics following a narrative similar to the way a classic country song might. Winter strolled along the stage as the slightly rambling verses were performed, the writing following a cowboy who has a psychedelic experience. He goes on to dance the seven hills of Rome, see the Great Wall, and see “...The dead come back to life,” before things suddenly start to slow and distort. Green’s guitar squeals, and Revaz plays several dissonant chords as Winter joins at a separate set of keys next to him. The band jams in this different tone for several bars, each of their heads then turning to Bassin to bring them back in together. Our cowboy has a grandiose nature at this point, challenging, “hit me, motherfucker!” As the final flourishes of the instruments are hit.
“We have one more song,” Winter announced to screams and applause. The final track kicked off with plucks of a few bluesy notes with a boxy resonance, which distorted throughout the song, and foreboding taps of the snare and cymbals. This was another unreleased song, and one that had never been played. Winter lilted and chanted through the first verse, “I tried, so very hard/I really, really tried/ THERE’S A BOMB IN MY CAR!” The last lyric there is repeated as the chorus several times. Although usually referred to by this shocking line, the song is said to be titled “Trinidad.” The bass droned, the guitars grew fuzzy. The lyrics are wacky and murky, particularly in the bridge. Disquiet grew through, “My son is in bed/ My daughters are dead/ My wife’s in the shed/ My husband is peeling off the lead from the walls.” The ominous tone builds before the chorus crashes back in at a sped-up tempo. The audience was clearly shocked and grateful to be getting a new song, and the band seemed to love performing it, Green shredding while kicking her Converse-clad feet back and forth, Bassin going wild on his kit.
The song, and by extension, the set, ended with finality. The last crash of the drums, pluck of the keys and bass, and last strum of the guitars in unison. In the echo of the final note, Winter exclaimed, “Goodnight everybody! Thank you Salt Lake.”
There’s a moment you sometimes have to take after shows to find your bearings and decide what you’re going to do next. I waited a few moments as the compactedness of the crowd eased before attempting to leave, only to then realize that during the time I had been knocked around, my shirt had caught in between two sections of the barrier– I was essentially stuck. I waved down security as the massive crowd dispersed around me, energy still thrumming.
