Getting Killed

...ooklyn-based experimental rock band, Getting Killed finds Geese at their most chaotic, delivering an assured yet jarring set of no-wave-tinged art-rock missives that are as unnerving as they are festering with earworm hooks and biting humor. Gen Z’s superpower lies in its cultural immediacy -- a vast rolodex of influences ready to be summoned, ingested, dismissed, or argued over in the blink of an eye. Geese transcend the mile-wide/inch-deep results of so many of their genre-juggling contemporaries by tapping into the emotional malaise of the information age without succumbing to it. The band's kitchen-sink approach -- melding ebullient melodies and cryptic, yet oddly relatable lyrics with grooves drawn from soul, blues, funk, progressive rock, post-punk, and whatever else the algorithm tosses their way -- consistently sticks the landing. While rooted in the dual torments of existential angst and sociopolitical discord, Getting Killed always feels like a party, with standout cuts like "Cobra," "Husbands," and Taxes" summoning both cynicism and fortitude, transforming its bleak undercurrents into something defiantly alive and weirdly cathartic. Even at their most belligerent -- the lumbering "Trinidad" and the Strokes-ian title track -- Geese embrace the zeitgeist with youthful urgency and flickers of cautious hope, as frontman Cameron Winter tries his best to make the apocalypse danceable while channeling Thom Yorke on every depressant imaginable. ~ James Christopher Monger