The Monday Meeting

Cutting through the noise with something to sip on as you start your week.

Hello and happy Monday,

It was a big week in London last week. And by that I mean Geese stopped by Eventim Apollo to wrap up their latest leg of Getting Killed live dates, which brought them on a whirlwind tour of Europe and the UK.

The last six-ish months of indie music culture have, essentially, been Geesemania. You can ratchet that up to the last year if you count the Cameron Winter Heavy Metal craze that befell the folk scene shortly before Getting Killed. Speaking on the phenomenon, a well-meaning creative (boy) friend of mine said at a recent party (in piercing seriousness): “I think we’ve found our Bob Dylan. Like, we’re living what the first people who found Bob Dylan found.” Sure. I’ll let him have it. But I’ll also have to chuckle (both with and at him).

Some haven’t been so sure of Geesemania. Courtney Love, for example, has been among its most prominent skeptics. In February, Love described herself not as a Geese fan but as cautiously “Geese-curious.” A few days ago, she’d changed her tune, noting that she’d actually come around to the band’s music. The one thing she couldn’t stand, though, were their fans. As she put it: “The Geese trolls are like another kettle of fish … I feel like it’s 1990 and I’m trying to impress Sonic Youth again, which is great. I don’t know. … I’m like a cool old lady who likes a band. Get off my back … It’s like 13-year-old Swifties coming for me. I mean, it’s hilarious.”

Indeed, if there’s anything to be grumpy about in the Geeseverse, it’s surely the army of gatekeepers determined to separate the so-called “posers and normies” from the self-described “true believers.” It should be noted, many of said gatekeepers only found the band this past October. But no matter! They really know! And, according to them, the rest of us really do not!

So, as I prepared to make my way to what would surely be London indie-rock’s event of the year, I decided I’d test Love’s hypothesis for myself. Thus ensued my quest to perform an amateur ethnography of Geese and Geesemania, the results of which make up the rest of today’s letter.

“I’d love to meet Cameron Winter, and I’ll tell you that right now,” a young fan told me after we got chatting while waiting in line for merch. It seemed, in that moment, to be his deepest and truest wish. His friend nodded along in agreement. To be sure, that the band had pulled off packing a five thousand cap venue was a feat in and of itself. But the levels of pure devotion present in the crowd were what really seemed, to me, to be the group’s crowning achievement. There are lots of bands who can pack big rooms full of people who just want a night out. It’s another thing to watch a band pack a room full of teenagers (and adults and young people and seniors) who nearly worship the ground they walk on. That was what appeared to be happening to Geese.

To be honest, I entered my so-called “ethnography” smugly. First of all, the plan had only come together on the tube over as sort of a cheeky bit. To be a Geese fan requires, of course, a love of the music. The records are just that extra mile off the beaten path for avid listeners to not have some kind of appreciation for artistic risk taking and stuff that’s just honestly a little weird.

But as the band’s star has risen, claiming Geese fandom has also unfortunately, at times, become synonymous with a strange sort of artistic pretentiousness found often in inhabitants and frequenters of Brooklyn and East London (and culturally adjacent locations). As Courtney Love pointed out, there’s a weird mix of diehard gatekeeping and near-manosphere politics (in a horseshoe theory way) present in some of the band’s biggest fans that can turn the general public off them altogether. To me, watching that happen is a real shame. Of that crowd, I was ready to poke a little fun.

The pregame at the pub made it seem likely I’d stumble upon ripe narrative fruit. One table over, a Britpop-esque guy was grilling a bored-looking girl, asking her if “We met at the Wunderhorse gig? Or maybe at the Fontaines gig? Or maybe Westside Cowboy?” He was grasping at straws. She looked like she wanted to run and hide.

As we strolled up to the venue, we watched an army of “London creatives” descend. So much camo. So many military pants. So many boxy, heavyweight hoodies. So many perfectly structured yet also vintage-looking baseball caps. So many Solomons. It was a feeding frenzy. Of course, my dear friend who was with me rightly pointed out that I had arrived in the land of my people. If I joked around, I was only making fun of myself. Fork found in kitchen. To make matters worse, my limited edition Geese Dover Street Market hoodie was, at that very moment, on preorder. Alas.

Even more unfortunately for my superiority complex — but fortunately for culture writ large — as I embedded myself in the indie masses, I found an earnest and genuinely thoughtful milieu. Whatever percentage of Geese fans out there are insufferable, it’s smaller than the Internet — and I — assumed. The buzz was palpable and childlike. The kids were off their phones. The people were excited. And I was incredibly happy to be sharing in that excitement. It was nice, for once, to feel as though I was somewhere where there was something to look forward to, not just something to dread or muscle through on autopilot. There isn’t enough of that in the world right now.

Anyway, over by the venue bar, I ended up mingling with a pair of New Zealanders — Daniel and Seth — who were decked out in new Geese gear. As the story was told to me, Seth put Daniel on to Geese just before Daniel made the big move over to the UK about 18 months ago. Ever since then, he’d been waiting patiently to catch them at a gig. “There’s been a lull in the rock space. They came in and shook it up. They’ve had the post-COVID attitude of ‘nothing really matters anymore’, which resonates. And, we’re not in control of anything, so we just need to rock it out,” Daniel explained.

And if Daniel could say anything to Cameron Winter? Well, he knew exactly what it would be. “Can I be a groupie?” he asked with a wink. I certainly hope he can.

Inside the hall, I found myself standing next to a kid with spiky blonde hair. I had a feeling he knew what was up — I overheard him talking about his appreciation for The Jesus and Mary Chain — so I introduced myself and asked if I could hit him with a few questions. Turns out, I’d just run into Christian Sayers, someone who not only certainly knows what was up but is also the guy behind “Train Tracks,” a new short-form interview show for musicians (be sure to check that out).

Christian and I chatted about the very welcome return of guitar music (much discussed at this point, but still very true) and the rarity of finding a cutting-edge band that so many could enjoy together. We talked about how rare a figure like Cameron Winter is, even if it’s easy to scoff at the “mysterious auteur” archetype, and how good someone like him is for pushing music forward.

“Down with gatekeeping,” Christian said to me when I brought up some of the trolls who tend to walk away from a band just as they get big. “Yeah,” a friend of his chimed in. “Music is for the people.”

“We love that Geese are making it! It’s so good for the culture. Fuck gatekeeping,” one of the others in his group added. “It’s so stupid to be like, ‘Oh what a shame people are listening to good music.’ If that’s you, what are you doing?”

And if I needed any affirmation that Geese were truly reaching the masses, I was about to get it. Just behind us, I found a group that looked fresh out of a post-work happy hour. They looked a little uneasy — I overheard one of them say to his friend “Mate, I don’t think we’re meant to be here, per se” — but also relatively easygoing. Seeming friendly enough, I decided to ask what had brought them to Geese, of all places, on a Wednesday night.

Turns out, the answer was pretty simple: a friend’s boyfriend had bought tickets for the group. The boyfriend, as I learned during the set, was certainly a certified Geese head. He knew every single word. The rest of them, not so much. When I asked if they’d ever listened to Geese, one of them replied: “Yeah. I go up to Hyde Park and listen to Geese all the time. There are lots of them there.” Fair enough! I did, however, manage to catch that same man grinning from ear to ear when “Taxes” played. A new convert, born again.

As the show went on, I couldn’t keep from turning over in my mind something Seth from New Zealand had said at the end of our lobby chat. “We’re obviously also super into The Strokes, but we weren’t old enough to be there for that,” he’d added just before he went on his way. “We feel a bit like this is our Strokes.” I’d sort of dismissed this as sweet but trite when he first said it. But, as I watched the crowd move and sway and swell to each and every song, I realised he might have been right.

The whole night, from start to finish, felt like one of those “I was there when” moments. Kids in the pit were hopping up on their friends’ shoulders. Venue-provided drink cups were flying. Sanitary? Maybe not. Endearing? Definitely. There was little on this earth better, I thought to myself, than holding two of your closest friends in your arms and singing along to a fantastic live rendition of “Cobra” which may, somehow, have been superior to the original. Perhaps the only thing that made the moment sweeter was knowing thousands of other strangers were having ones just like it all around me at the exact same time.

In a way, it felt like the nebulous “scene” that’s been coalescing since the end of the pandemic had finally hardened into a definable crowd. And that crowd was all at Geese. Whatever the indie sleazers got in the early 2010s — and the punks got at CBGBs and the 90s kids got at Jeff Buckley shows — we’re getting with this band, now. Call me tacky if you want. But before you do, go to a Geese show and find out for yourself.

In other news:

• The Face is closing down after only recommencing publishing in 2019, marking the end of their second act. I’m incredibly sad to see it go. Shaad wrote a rather gutting and also very true eulogy for the mag. But also, the whole thing has me wondering how we move forward. I don’t believe culture media will ever go away, I just think it will take a high level innovation to find different viable formats without sacrificing on craft. Hopefully people who believe in the craft won’t shy away from taking up that mantle. Print media has and always will be so special to me, but I do wonder if the ones who win this era won’t be afraid to experiment with and centre new tools. To be determined.

• Bob Dylan is on Patreon? Alexis Petridis has some thoughts.

• Fcukers came out swinging with their debut record last week. I’m incredibly excited for the duo’s future. I also loved their cover story with Dork.

• I’m not sure if any of you have heard of a little thing called the Brooklyn Center for Theater Research. But if you have (or even if you haven’t), you MUST read this piece by Zayd Vlach for The New Critic. Crazy hilarious and crazy accurate.

• The founders of a marketing agency called Chaotic Good spoke on Billboard’s On The Record podcast. An interesting look at the state of digital marketing and what the arena of promotion looks like now. It goes deeper than you think!

• This just in: Clairo was spotted behind the decks at a bar in NYC.

• Hackney’s Moth Club won a major bid to stay open. A planning application that would have jeopardized the venue’s future was refused. However, another, similar application is still in progress.

• The Junos aired in Canada last night. Joni Mitchell showed up to collect a lifetime achievement award, the Beaches won group of the year for a third time in a row, and Nelly Furtado made it to the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. Also, Mae Martin hosted and looked incredibly dapper doing it.