You know how geese (like the bird) seem like they’re pretty cute and fine and not dangerous until you get too close and they turn into the dinosaurs that they are and chase you across the lawn?
Geese (like the band — Partisan’s first local Brooklyn signee) are kind of like that. But in a good way, I swear; they’re young — all 18 or 19, just graduated from high school. They’ve played only enough shows to have found their footing on stage in front of an eager audience, but already that footing is precise. They play with such confidence, with a wildness that really only a couple of teens could capture. They’re smart, but they’re also so thrilled and fresh, which is thrilling… and fresh to see. It’s no wonder there was a bit of a label bidding war over them, sparked by a track thrown on the internet that was meant to just be an end to a school project.
Cameron Winter with vox, guitarists Gus Green and Foster Hudson, Dom DiGesu on bass, and drummer Max Bassin played to a sold-out Zone 1 at Elsewhere last weekend, and you know a band is buzzy when every music photographer in Brooklyn and beyond comes out to a Zone 1 show; they proved themselves worthy of the buzz. Even since their last Brooklyn show at Our Wicked Lady, they’ve improved exponentially, and it’s exciting to think about their trajectory from here.
Their songwriting is clever as heck. While lyrics are penned by Winter, it’s apparent what a mind-melding process it is between the big-brain guitar licks, sly basslines, and drums perfectly balanced between haphazardly hard-hitting & pristine, it’s a full team effort. A full flock effort? Ay —
Their latest single “Low Era” is a little like the opposite end of a magnet to their previous single, “Disco”. It begs you to dance much more enthusiastically than the only other song they’ve got on DSPs.
Of “Low Era”, Geese say, “We had been trying to get everything to sound super heavy, creepy crawly, and complicated, really because that’s all we knew how to do. Four-on-the-floor songs like “Low Era” had felt a little like poison to us for a while, until we consciously tried to challenge ourselves to write something more danceable. Once we stopped enforcing certain boundaries, it ended up working out without us expecting it to, and even ushered in this psychedelic 3-D element that ends up appearing throughout the album.
“We like the idea of confusing the listener a little, and trying to make every song a counteraction to the last, pinballing between catchy and complicated, fast and slow. “Low Era” is one end of that spectrum, and ultimately broadened the scope of songs we thought we could make.”
Upstairs at Elsewhere, the guys were chilling in their neon winter fur hats, on one of the hotter days of the summer. I asked Cameron what the perfume smelled like (from the lyric “I can smell your perfume, but I can’t hear your voice” in “Disco”) smelled like, and Max had to remind him what the hell I was talking about — “she’s talking about the perfume in ‘Disco'” – to which Cameron took a sec to say, “I like to leave it up for interpretation,” and kinda laughed. I think that’s a great answer, and appreciate a young artist who isn’t too precious about his work that’s totally worth being precious about.
Look out for Geese’s Projector out late this year via Partisan Records, and follow them on Instagram, Twitter, Spotify
