Getting Killed by Geese
#6
2025 may have been the year of good sophomore releases - if I’m not mistaken, they make up about half of my top 10! But the fact that Geese spiritually (if not literally) had the sophomore album of 2025 is not lost on anyone. After bursting onto the scene in 2023 with their breakout effort 3D Country, raising rumors that they were going to bring back “real” rock ‘n’ roll, Getting Killed saw them explode to legendary proportions in one of the most universal and well-deserved hype trains of recent memory.
Getting Killed actually sees Geese leave behind some of what made them popular with 3D Country. Where the latter shone with memorable singalong choruses and focused genre studies, Getting Killed has a sound that can go to some extreme depths. Cameron Winter, continuing down the vocal path he explored on his late 2024 singer-songwriter record, wails emotively on this project - landing somewhere between the soulful wiles of Tim Buckley and the desperation of Lou Reed. The wild choirs of the title track feel cultish, and the “chorus” of opener “Trinidad” blisters and explodes as Winter screams “THERE’S A BOMB IN MY CAR.” There’s also a sort of unspoken darkness to how Geese approach their grooves: on a lot of these tracks (eg. “100 Horses”), there aren’t many huge left turns going on in the rhythm section, but the shifting dynamics and intensity create a chugging, krautrock-adjacent vibe that feels equally jammy, earthy, and dark.
But, as Geese fans know, these songs are also endlessly beautiful and irresistible. There’s the swaggering and sweet “Baby”-punctuated chorus of “Cobra,” the twinkling guitars and piano of “Au Pays du Cocaine,” and the pop rock melody of “Taxes” that comes to build so much catharsis, just to name a few. The latter of those also offers one of the most affecting and relatable American political sentiments of the year, as Cameron sings about how “I [we] should burn in hell” for the atrocities committed by the United States using our tax money, going on to say that he would rather die than pay his taxes. Another climax of the record is the closer “Long Island City Here I Come,” which deals in fast-paced, frenetic grooves and incredible one-liners like “Like Joshua kicked the king out of Jericho/I'm about to kick your ass up and down this street,” and “The lord has a lot of friends, and in the end/He'll probably forget he's ever met you before.” With so much energy and catharsis, Getting Killed certainly holds as the most refreshing rock album of the year.