Geese are the experimental rock band of the moment. It’s a thrill to see an excellent band bring so many new fans under the big tent of rock ‘n’ roll. However, some fans worry when their favorite bands suddenly become famous, especially when the frontman becomes famous in his own right. That is the case with Geese‘s Cameron Winter in the wake of his 2026 Live at Carnegie Hall album and film, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
After these achievements, will Geese remain the same band the fans fell in love with? Will they lose their touch? Will what some perceive as Winter’s growing ego eclipse his yearning to write a great tune or play a great show?
No one knows the future of this New York quartet of early 20-somethings, but right now might be the best time to catch them live. Over 15, 16 and 17 October 2026, Geese played three sets at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, creating an ecstatic community each night among its mostly young crowd and playing ripping rock ‘n’ roll that almost seemed to urge the nearby dead right to come out of their graves and join the crowd.
Opener Bill Orcutt, a veteran of the alt-rock scene, preceded each night’s set. After a five-year stint fronting the band Harry Pussy with his wife, Adris Hoyos, he has steadily released solo and trio music for decades. Orcutt took the stage alone each night, just one man and an electric guitar, with no vocals, and no real songs to speak of.
For 45 minutes each night, he shredded toward a destination only he could see, mesmerizing the crowd already up close to the stage and providing background music for those still getting drinks and hot dogs. Like Jimi Hendrix’s “Star-Spangled Banner”, Orcutt played toward a feeling. Like a musical Bob Ross, each night he started with a blank canvas and used similar tactics to fill it, but note by note, he built a distinct minor masterpiece night after night.
Geese took the stage at precisely 8:10 and were finished by 9:30 each night. It’s a quick show, less than half the length of a show by their counterpart-in-fowl, Goose. Their setlists are largely similar night to night, but punctuated by differences that change each set’s feel.
On nights one and three, the opener was the final song from 2025’s Getting Killed, “Long Island City Here I Come”, played jittery and skittery, with asynchronous rhythms, and lots of starts and stops. The first night, the song felt slightly unsure and tentative, like a cat sneaking out of a hiding place, but by night three it was blistering, played for 12 vicious minutes. On night two, they opened with “Taxes”, which set a completely different tone, dark, heavy, and melodic, with a wordless first minute that made it feel like a Cure song.
Each night, songs two, three, and four echoed the album: “Cobra”, “Husbands”, and “Getting Killed”, such perfect sequencing on the record that there’s no reason to mess with it for the live show. Over these three songs, the band electrified the crowd each night. Hundreds sang every word to the gorgeous “Cobra” and “Husbands” before bouncing and slamming into each other for “Getting Killed”.
The crowd at these three shows, especially up front, was very young, mostly teens and 20-somethings, a mix of devoted emo-and-alt-music-heads and kids who had never seen a mosh pit in real life. This show became their instruction. When the pit opened up during the breakdown in the middle of “Getting Killed”, some younger fans could be heard shouting, “What’s happening?” By the end of the show, they were smiling ear to ear, their braces reflecting the stage lights, saying, “I didn’t know concerts could be like that.”
This crowd’s excitability was one of the show’s defining characteristics. Once Geese started boiling, they didn’t simmer down till the end of the show. Sometimes it made sense. Every night, the most reliable bangers were “2122”, which on the second night featured a great interpolation of “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” by the Ramones, “100 Horses”, and “Bow Down”. The latter was consistently one of the show’s highlights, with a long middle breakdown that let the mosh pit expand, then teased the crowd with a great Rock and Roll Pause, before then tearing the place apart with a final fantastic solo from Emily Green.
Even the slow songs had a lot of fan-on-fan contact. Fans crowd-surfed to the crystalline “Half Real”, and a collection of sweaty arms wrapped around shoulders for “Au Pays du Cocaine”.
The first night was the only one that the band played every song from Getting Killed. On night two, fans bemoaned the lack of “Long Island City”, and on night three, “Islands of Men”. At each show, fans got deep cuts they didn’t hear the first night. Geese don’t touch their first album, 2021’s Projector, anymore, perhaps because they feel they’ve outgrown it, but they play a lot from their second album, 3D Country (2023). Each setlist included “Crusades”—which inspired jumping and “hey hey hey”s from the crowd, as if it had transformed into the audience of an Oasis show—“Cowboy Nudes”, and the aforementioned “2122”.
Night two slipped in “Space Race” from their EP 4D Country (2023), and night three featured 3D Country’s pretty ballad “Domoto” and crowd favorite “I See Myself”, which saw fans singing into the eyes of strangers, “I see myself in YOU!”
“Taxes” closed out the set on nights one and three, its soaring rebellion inspiring everyone in the crowd. If they’d had their 1099s with them, they’d likely have torn them into pieces. Because “Taxes” opened night two, they closed out with “Au Pays”, wrapping the song with a take-no-prisoners drum solo from the truly inspired Max Bessin.
The encore each night was the same: a ten-plus-minute “Trinidad” that absolutely scorched the earth beneath their feet. The first two nights, Winter extended the bridge with an extemporaneous spoken word portion. On night one, he spoke about “losing it all on DraftKings, putting it all on the Ethereum,” and on night two he delivered the indelible line, “Well guess what buddy, there’s a Carl’s Jr. in the AIRPORT.” Night three, he stuck to the lyrics in the recorded track but stretched them out like silly putty. Then they were gone, leaving the crowd in a frenzied puddle.
Geese are new to the world they now occupy, where so many professionals are involved in putting on their show. They’re not used to having roadies offer them new guitars every song, and they’re still growing into their size. At times, Winter takes to the keyboard when touring keyboardist Sam Revaz is onstage, and it feels unnecessary. The energy dips when Winter sits down. His presence is the most caustic and charismatic when he’s standing with his guitar or shaking the tambourine before the microphone.
The light show will also improve over time. At these three shows at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, the lighting was almost entirely from behind, silhouetting Geese. These four cut a fine silhouette, for sure, but fans would better see their faces as they play their fascinating rock songs. Confidence will come; soon Geese will be another professional rock band, and we’ll all miss the days when they were as surprised by their sudden fame as their fans were. By the third night at Hollywood Forever, they were already more comfortable on stage, with Winter actually saying a couple of words to the crowd and Green toying with little licks between songs.
Ultimately, 80 minutes was the perfect length for these sets. This is a rich band, like foie gras. You don’t want to stuff the crowd until they feel sick. You want to leave them wanting more. We wanted more, even after three straight nights.
