When Geese released their debut album Projector in 2021, they were just out of high school and channelled their teenage angst into gritty, angular post-punk. But the band’s expressive musicianship and singer Cameron Winter’s passionate, even theatrical, vocals hinted at an exuberance, a flamboyance that could not be contained in dusty garage rock.
Less than two years later, the group return with an explosive second album that unleashes the full breadth of their potential. While the jagged scratches of post-punk still make up the skeleton of the music on 3D Country, the spaces in between are flooded with vibrant shades of gospel, country, metal and glam.
The album opens in an oppressive thunderstorm with the gnarled guitar and agitated rhythms of 2122, before opening out into the bright country-flecked and gospel-infused rock of 3D Country and Cowboy Nudes. The former laces mammoth piano chords with sparkling electric guitar, while the latter pauses partway for an invigorating bongo solo. Fizzing with vitality, these two singles are the record’s most celebratory moments and furthest from the sobriety of Geese’s debut.
But there is a darker side to the album too. Mysterious Love crashes in with gargantuan slashes of guitar and hoarse shouting, juxtaposed by the radiant harmonies of its ethereal outro. Undoer, meanwhile, is a brooding seven minute piece, built around Max Bassin’s scuttling percussion and Dom DiGesu’s skulking, jazzy bassline.
As moody and suspenseful as the song is, the machine gun fire and screaming that breaks out at the end feel out of place. It’s one of a few moments on the record that feels as if the band are trying to wring more drama and grandeur out of the music than it would naturally yield. And while Winter’s glam rock theatricality on Crusades and the Queen-esque balladry of Gravity Blues are exhilarating, the band’s indulgence in the extravagant also results in overwrought lyrics like “When the Kali Yuga comes and closes my eyes and we can die by the equine / Osiris of my life I’m giving you the run-around”.
Final track St Elmo relinquishes this grandiosity for a loose, sunny and haphazard singalong. Honky-tonk piano sways drunkenly and stilted percussion staggers clumsily, as string instruments dive in a feathery swoop. It’s a conclusion that fully embraces 3D Country’s ‘anything goes’ ethos, and, with its total lack of reverence and solemnity, seems to free Geese from any genre constraints whatsoever, sending them soaring off to greater heights.