One day in early December, the American comic Emily Bonani posted a video to Instagram captioned “Studying the Geese Show”. “A couple of months ago, I met a man who was on his way to a Geese show,” her monologue began. “And at this point I had never heard of Geese, but he seemed very excited. But then, slowly, month after month, I met men on their way to a Geese show—always on their way to a Geese show…”
Bonani went on to express her surprise at discovering that Geese are a young band, attracting a young crowd, and likened the “godlike” worship they kindle to that long-inspired by Phish. “I’ve never disliked a man on his way to a Geese show,” she added. “I’ve also never heard a man return from a Geese show…”
This past year, I, too, have encountered many men on their way to a Geese show. It’s been a rather lovely thing to witness—a musical murmuration of sorts, moved by its own intricacies and momentum. I can also say with some certainty that they are not a band from which many return; rather, like the National or Radiohead or Fontaines DC, they are the type of act in which fans quickly become irretrievably immersed.
Geese formed in Brooklyn, New York, in 2016, a four-piece made up of a group of close school friends. This year, still in their early twenties, they released their second album, Getting Killed. It’s a dazzling record, one that we might loosely classify as “indie rock” but that is more experimental than that title might suggest. It inclines towards jazz and art rock and noise rock, and is built upon rhythmic patterns pushed all the further by producer Kenny Beats, best known for his work in the realm of hip-hop.
The critical reception has been rapturous—“Are Geese Gen Z’s first great rock band?” wondered one magazine headline. Beyond such hyperbole, the success of Geese certainly signals a move towards music that is pleasingly incalculable; quite in defiance of the kind of pop music that has thrived in recent years; low-level, uniform, blah.
I’ve written here before about a kind of messiness and imperfection that has returned to contemporary music of late, and it’s there in Geese, certainly—in the way opening track “Trinidad” descends into a fantastic chaos, for instance, frontman Cameron Winter’s voice grown frayed and worn and beautiful. Perhaps it’s too easy to conclude that in this post-truth age of AI slop and Instagram filters we find ourselves drawn to music that feels human and complicated, but it also feels right. I’m sure, in time, our robot overlords will be capable of writing songs that feel heart-wrenchingly incomplete, or peculiarly specific, or wilfully abstruse, but, right now, bands like Geese seem to offer some palpable sign of life.
In this lineage we might also mention Thomas Dollbaum, the New Orleans-based songwriter whose Drive All Night swiftly became one of my most-listened-to following its Autumn release. Dollbaum is also a poet, and it was his lyrical dexterity that first reeled me in; songs populated by characters whose lives aren’t entirely hanging together well—the “hearts in the ashtray” of the title track, or the protagonist of single “Angus Valley”, conceding: “I was the one throwing bricks through the Salvation Army window / And I’ve been riding round town with my headlights off at night.” There’s an open-endedness to the way Dollbaum writes that I find appealing—like Bruce Springsteen, or Bill Callahan, or John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, these aren’t songs with easy solutions or resolutions.
Tyler Ballgame is a slightly different prospect. Yet to release a full album, much of his material began when the singer was at his lowest ebb, depressed and unemployed, living in his mother’s basement in Rhode Island. Still, they have grown to be the kind of songs that bind people; filled with a generosity of spirit, with a gentle acknowledgment that life isn’t always kind or neat, delivered with a warmth reminiscent of Roy Orbison or Harry Nilsson. He does not look like your archetypal pop star—nor is he interested in doing so—and his shows hold the kind of intoxicating unruliness of Sam Cooke at the Harlem Square Club.
Dove Ellis arrived from Ireland by way of Manchester to deliver Blizzard, one of this year’s most compelling debuts, carrying shades of Van Morrison, Joan Armatrading, Jeff Buckley. I love this record, but what I love even more is the feeling that this is not the greatest thing he will ever make; there’s a real confidence in a young artist happy to evolve in front of his audience, rather than being caught up in ideas of perfection and hype and marketing.
There was a raw irreverence, too, to the debut EP by Supermodel*, the stage name of LA-based artist Frankie Beanie. Self-deprecating, Beasties-tinged, proudly DIY, he set out his stall in the almost infuriatingly brilliant “I Used to Live in England”.
Another highlight of this past year has been Blurrr, Joanne Robertson’s collaboration with the cellist Oliver Coates. Robertson is also a visual artist and her music carries a fascinating sense of light, shade, colour and texture. She is particularly interesting to me in partnership with others—as in her previous work with Dean Blunt, for example. Coates is one of my favourite musicians—you may well know him from his score for Aftersun, or his work with Radiohead, or his sublimely innovative solo work—so to hear these two forming some sort of alliance or collusion was nothing short of wonderful.
Lily Allen has always written frankly, but here she found a new kind of openness
In any review of this past year it would be improper to ignore the entirely unexpected but utterly glorious return of Lily Allen. Her fifth album, West End Girl, charting the tumultuous end of her marriage to actor David Harbour, was a rubber-necking work of genius, filled with pop hooks and scandalous detail. Allen has always written frankly, but here she found a new kind of openness—one that was bracing and brilliant and did not flinch from scrutinising her own behaviour.
By the time of its release, we had already been steeped in the candid observations of CMAT’s Euro-Country, Self Esteem’s A Complicated Woman, and even Addison Rae’s excellent, exploratory, extraordinarily self-aware approach to pop music in Addison. Already feted by younger artists such as Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish, Allen’s return reminded us how much her songwriting had paved the way for women singing honestly and unapologetically about themselves. As PinkPantheress put it, “Lily Allen made sounding like yourself feel cool.”
Reassessing oneself was also a preoccupation for Bruce Springsteen, who this year unveiled his monolithic reissue project Tracks II: The Lost Albums. Offering 83 outtakes recorded between 1983 and 2019, it revealed that some of the most interesting music of his career had long been left in the studio vaults. Its release was a commercial opportunity, no doubt, but more deeply it spoke to the idea of an artist quite willing to see himself afresh.
He was not alone. In the midst of The Grand Oasis Summer, came the release of More, the eighth album by the Gallaghers’ Britpop contemporaries Pulp. Assured national treasures, it would be wildly easy for Pulp to plough the nostalgia furrow for eternity, but the great joy of More was that it should prove one of the greatest albums of the band’s career. Jarvis Cocker has always stood among our finest lyricists—sharp-witted, observant, tender, but the surprise here was that, having reached his sixties, he would now find himself ready to turn that keen eye on himself. The man he captured on More was flawed, funny, faltering and—yes—messy. Perhaps the album’s loveliest and most revealing moment came in a track named “Farmers Market”, that in its closing moments becomes a kind of incantation: “Ain’t it time we started living?” it wondered, before drawing to another question: “Ain’t it time we started feeling?”
It's a thought that has carried me through much of my listening in 2025: the pursuit of music that not only makes me feel, but that in all of its mess and adventure and impropriety makes me feel alive. Perhaps, in this way, I too have been something like a man on his way to a Geese show. And so my hope is that I may always be this excited. That I may never return.
