• Interviews

• All
• Music
• Cinema
• TV
• Comic Books

Jun 23, 2023 By Andy Steiner Photography by Kyle Berger Web Exclusive

Cameron Winter inevitably uses the phrase “level up” when he talks about Geese’s second album, 3D Country, out today via Partisan and Play It Again Sam. “It just felt like the right time to do the stereotypical second album thing and level up, and just see how it feels,” the vocalist and frontman says about recording the album, the follow-up to the band’s 2021 debut, Projector.

He’s a little unsure of the statement he makes and follows it with: “I guess I’d be lying if I don’t see it as a step up. But…it’s a hard question. In my head, your job as someone who has been given a platform to make music is to just get better and level up and make something that’s truer to yourself and pushes things forward and is honest. And I feel like this album is definitely more unique to me than Projector in the current landscape. But I don’t know. There’s definitely going to be people who don’t like it as much as the first one.”

Winter is modest, but 3D Country is an indisputable step-up for the Brooklyn five-piece—also featuring guitarists Gus Green and Foster Hudson, bassist Dominic DiGesu, and drummer Max Bassin. They had more time to make the album, more successful experiences recording in a professional studio, and capped it all off with an NME digital cover story. The energy around the release of 3D Country is undeniable. “Level up” might even be an understatement.

But the album came from an extended period of trial and error. “We had a lot more time to write,” Winter says. “Projector was front-to-back finished over the course of five months. So, it was very quick. And then this album, the whole process took about two years…. We had a lot more B-sides. We left a lot more on the cutting room floor. We learned a lot in the process. Most of the songs that ended up on the album finished in the final third of that two years. But we had a lot of time to struggle, which I think is important. We had a lot of time to fail.”

You can hear that work all across 3D Country. It moves away from the artsy post-punk of Projector into something freer and more vibrant. It’s an album where every band member embraces their artistic whims without ever overplaying. Instead, it bursts with ideas. Opener “2122” careens through guitar licks, banjo strums, and Winter’s yelps. “Gravity Blues” takes the bright chords of ’70s AOR and runs it through the ringer. The title track brings in a gospel choir.

Geese have been playing together since 2016, and they have the synergy of long-time friends and bandmates. But on 3D Country, they crystallized that musical chemistry and married it to the glossiness of a professional studio: “It’s the first time we’ve successfully worked in a professional studio. We tried ages ago. And we freakin’ stunk at it so badly…. We’d butcher the stems and not know how to work with an engineer. We’d just say yes to everything and go in and play and then it would sound like fuckin’ Foo Fighters. We’d just be like, ‘We don’t like this’ and not know how to articulate why.”

Winter continues: “We were trying to do Projector as hi-fi as possible. The only reason it sounds lo-fi is because we had shitty equipment, and that’s just how it came out. We were trying so hard to make it shine like it was professional. But it didn’t by virtue of what we were working with. And so, when we went into an actual studio and we were working with professionals, everything was clean and straightforward and a bit less dark and cavernous sounding.”

If the production of 3D Country is crisp and sleek, its vocals are more unhinged than ever. Winter screams and croons. His voice can command the focus of a track with punk-like urgency and then recede into softness within seconds. Projector’s emotional dynamics came from the band’s dark arrangements. On 3D Country, it comes from Winter’s vocals. In his words, he’s willing to “go there.” “I have a high tolerance for going there,” he says. “I feel like I have the technical ability to do it, so I was just like, ‘Fuck it, I guess I’m doing this.’ Honestly, it began in live performances as a nervous reaction. Tim Buckley was a huge influence on what I felt the bar was. His whole exploratory style felt very…his voice is almost mournful all the time. It’s like this crying sound…. And I thought it added so much to these songs that he has which are often so simple. In a lot of ways, I felt that the album needed a kick in the pants like that vocally. Some of the songs are meant to be simple and melodic. There are these passages that aren’t so instrumentally technical, at least not quite the way Projector was. So I felt that the vocals had space to stretch out on top of it.”

Geese have made it clear that they’re playing the long game. Winter is conscious of how his thoughts about his work might change in the future, whether it’s the potentially poor aging of their DALL-E generated album cover or the group’s decision to record in a professional studio. And he’s already thinking about how they will adapt on the next go of it. “I could see future albums going in more of a direction where we take the best of both words and maybe sometimes a professional studio is in order and sometimes, we can just record shit with an iPhone and see what works best for whichever song or part.” It proves that this is a band dedicated to learning, growing, and always outdoing themselves. You get the sense that every new Geese album will be a “level up.” But for now, 3D Country is a perfectly satisfying next step.

www.geeseband.com

Also read our interview with Geese on Projector.

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.