Review Summary: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.
“GOD OF THE SUN, I’M TAKING YOU DOWN ON THE INSIDE!”
And the horses’ gates fling open. No lanes—lanes suggest order. The track’s a damn oval, designed for the runners to go just the one way, and yet the competitors rush out, bucking sideways, downward, slamming into each other. A false start? You guys are professionals, aren’t you? Oh well, rack ‘em back up, give them a second cha-
“WHEN THE KALI YUGA COMES AND CLOSES MY EYES AND WE CAN DIE BY THE EQUINE!”
A modicum of control this time, but the air is undoubtedly amiss. The jockeys hiccup their steeds, lurching forward and reclining to a leisurely gait at inadvertent intervals. The announcer fills the gaps in the action with an unswayed diatribe against the divine. Over the horizon, fighter jets streak into view, approaching the stadium. “A late fly-over? Everyone's uncoordinated today, aren't they?” you playfully prod the stranger sitting beside you. He’s neither amused nor revolted, casually picking his teeth with the thin, pointed tip of a straw stalk.
“Get out.” Huh?
“Get under.” Wait, what? Why?
“Get out. Get under. Get," he drones, in plain unison compared to the emphatic cry from the loudspeaker.
The rest of the crowd stands, mouths agape, no longer watching the farce of a race below them. Hatched doors swing open from the bellies of the aircraft, dropping a breadcrumb trail of bombs from the blinding, cerulean sky. Half the audience scatters, much like the horses' aborted attempt minutes prior. The other half stands awestruck, arms aloft in an enchanted daze. A light, then cacophony, then everything ablaze. A smile cracks across my face as I holler back the opening line in the wreckage, a man whose psyche is forever changed.
“GOD OF THE SUN, I’M TAKING YOU DOWN ON THE INSIIIIIIIIDE!”
I have completed but one track off
3D Country, and it’s annihilated everything (see: not very much) I thought I knew about Geese, a Brooklyn-based quintet of university-bound eccentrics who had their individual pursuits uprooted in a last ditch chance at a music career together that somehow paid dividends: by the time they released their post-punk indebted debut
Projector in 2021, the sound they happened to unleash as a first taste had become the trend du jour among verbose indie acts. That can't really be considered their fault, but even as a muffled splash in an ocean, their chemistry signaled a hint of something fresher up their sleeves, and if they didn't fully harness it, well, at least they were led by an absolute ham on the mic.
And now? Now we go Spinal Tap-style up to eleven. No warning. No foreplay. No false advertising. Looking for a memorable way to fling a record’s proverbial curtains aside? “2122” is it, replete with Lynyrd Skynyrd-ass licks, proggy, staccato boobytraps, and a higher curveball per capita threshold than Bert Blyleven in his prime. All this in just under four minutes, cohering through facetious willpower that mandates we beg the question: are Geese just taking the piss, or are they also watering the garden while they’re at it?
Similar to their spiritual neighbors Black Midi, the proof is in the fever dream’s exhilarating abandon. Cameron Winter, the so-analogized announcer, has gone full tilt on his fondness for vocal affectations with
3D Country, a decision that will inevitably leave some folks running for shelter, but what’s a little rain gonna hurt every now and then, right? If nothing else, it’s as unabashedly multifaceted as the band’s boundless approach to composition, foraging across ground that might as well trace its roots back to (and this list is non-exhaustive) Tom Waits, James Brown, Yes, Television, and any oddball Americana from the last 70 years. No matter the lineage, Geese can subvert or play straight their musings at whatever caliber they so desire: the chamber pop, gospel-tinged suites of “Gravity Blues” deceitfully underlie its narrative of suicidal ideation. The mid-tempo funk groove of “I See Myself” backs a disarmingly honest tune of affection. Those two tracks respectively led into the dual-faced horror that is “Mysterious Love” and the gratuitous jam band extravaganza of “Undoer,” both of which undergo abrupt freakouts that ought to be grounds for admission to a psych ward.
It's a cop out, I know, but dissecting the mechanics of why
3D Country ticks is contrary to its whole pitch as an unpredictable experience. Point is this album contains glorious, boisterous multitudes. Summing the shtick up as shock value sells the dazzling creativity here short, and it's not necessarily true to extrapolate that a smorgasbord of inspiration inherently yields an incoherent mess. I’ve had a month to unpack this record and I’m frankly in no rush to delicately slip loose its knots within knots until all that’s left is an intestinal-length string—you can do that if you insist, or you can let its convincing madness wash over you at its own pace. Those bombs are gonna drop eventually, and if existing in
3D Country’s blast radius means I get to make believe I know the answers to its questions, I’m fine volunteering to be its poster fanboy. “Some sad stories have no fucking point,” Winter reminds us on closer “St. Elmo.” Some good—or at least entertaining—stories don’t either. The world would be a lesser place without them.
