Live Log 2023: Geese On The Hudson
Plus: Sweet 93, Lionlimb, and Jimmy Whispers (and Tomberlin)
There’s nothing like a great concert to bond you more tightly to a band. Seeing them onstage, how they move, their interactions, their relationships to their instruments, the attitude with which they address the audience…all these things can add up to leaving the show a bigger fan than when you came in. Sometimes the opposite happens, where a lackluster performance leads you to cling more closely to the album as object separate from the people who made it.
All that preamble is to say that I saw Geese open the Summer Concert series on the Wells Fargo Stage at Hudson Yards on June 21st and I was a way bigger fan by the time the show was over. Here are five reasons why.
Personalities: The band is made up of Cameron Winter (vocals, guitar), Gus Green (guitar), Foster Hudson (keyboards, guitar), Dominic DiGesu (bass), and Max Bassin (drums), all of whom are winning characters. Winter is cool and collected yet warm and welcoming, Green is kinetic and expressive, Hudson calm and professional, even when playing a keytar, DiGesu seems lost in the music, and while I couldn’t really see Bassin behind his enormous ride cymbal, his drumming spoke for itself. Shifting my gaze between the players gave me access to the different facets of their sound, which I could then reassemble by observing the group as a whole.
Playing: Creating a recording on a studio is a very different beast than performing live and what sometimes sounds confident and even virtuosic on an album can come off as tentative and merely adequate on stage. With Geese, while some of the polish of their second album was missing, it was replaced with pure energy and excitement. All of the musicians are far beyond competent on their instruments and Green is in a different class entirely. A true original, he turns such influences as Robert Quine, Nile Rodgers, and Andy Gill into his own riveting splatterific blend of noise, melody, and rhythm. I even heard a little bit of the slash and burn style of my old band mate, John Berry, in the mix. Green is a main focal point of the band in concert, but Winter more than held his own, rolling out that lush baritone and even hitting the falsetto notes with agility.
Surprise: With their second album, 3D Country, two days from release, Geese had a quiver full of new songs to spring on us and pulled them off with aplomb, as if they had been playing them on stage for months. If there had been advance copies of the album at a merch table, they would’ve sold them out!
Variety: Their albums, especially 3D Country, explore several modes, from soulful songs like I See Myself or the title track, which brings to mind latter-day Tim Buckley, to expressionistic, proggy freak outs like 2112 or Gravity Blues - but that doesn’t guarantee that they’d put that variety into the set list. But they did - and had a blast taking the audience on a wild and dynamic ride.
Fun: Even when their songs got knotty, moody, and dark, the whole band seemed to be having fun and delighted to be there. The contagion was real and it was impossible not to feel the same way. We left Hudson Yards energized and ready for more…keep reading!
Geese is on tour in the U.S. and Europe through November - don’t miss’em!
Sweet 93 opened the show for Geese with a nice mix of indie genres from jangle-pop to shoegaze (four guitars!). The project of Chloe Margaret (formerly Kohanski), they have some fine songs and deserve kudos for not continuing to pursue the polished pop that might be expected from a winner of The Voice. Glad to have them on my radar.
But as I said, we were ready for more and the night was still young so we headed down to Baby’s All Right in Williamsburg. Welcoming the opportunity to return to a favorite venue for the first time since…you know…I had RSVP’d for a free show at the Instagram imprecation of Tomberlin, who was opening with a DJ set. Also on the bill were Lionlimb and Jimmy Whispers, both of which seemed worth checking out.
After a detour to Milk Bar for a shake (first time - and worth the extra steps!), we arrived at Baby’s as the show was supposed to begin. Tomberlin was still hanging out near the door so, suspecting it might be a long night, we stepped inside for a drink. By the time they opened the music room, Tomberlin was still eating so I’m not 100 percent sure she ever did get the aux…but all the music sounded great, an eclectic blend crossing many genres and time periods.
Stewart Bronaugh, a singer, songwriter, guitarist, and multi-instrumentalist who used to play with Angel Olsen, essentially is Lionlimb. He took the stage in an overcoat - very postpunk - with Joshua Jaegar on drums and started what was their first show in 18 months. However, as shown on the last Lionlimb album, 2021’s very fine Spiral Groove, Bronaugh’s ambitions go beyond two instruments. So there was heavy use of dense backing tracks of keyboards, guitars, bass, etc., pushing the dynamic range of the sound system to its limit. But somehow the slightly distorted quality, when combined with Bronaugh’s heavily-treated, rain-streaked guitar, reverb-drenched vocals, and Jaegar’s ultra-crisp drumming, just served to make the songs lonelier and more impactful. They played a few new songs and some from their rich catalog, with Nothing from Spiral Groove being a standout. I checked in with Bronaugh after the show and he confirmed new music is on the way - keep an ear out in spring 2024.
Jimmy Whispers, led by Jimmy Cicero, was up next and filled out the stage with a quartet. There was a sax/flute/bass player, a drummer, a keyboard/violin player, and singer Cicero, a “normal” looking guy with an antic and high-strung persona. Before kicking off the set, he announced that many of the songs would be short, “because I have ADHD.”
Other than that, I didn’t know what to expect, as I hadn’t listened to his records, including the latest, The Search For God, which came out earlier this year. I wish I had, however, as when I played it the next day I realized that some of its sparkle, sweetness, and nuance had disappeared in the rougher sound of the club and the way Cicero barked out many of the lyrics, rather than using the sweet croon of the album. The playful naïveté of some of the songs still came through, reminding me of Jonathan Richman or, even better, TV Girl. But as Cicero ran around the stage, and even off it, often ending songs by rapping the microphone on the side of his head, the act came off as a bit of a shtick. It was entertaining, to be sure, but there’s more to the album than shtick - a lot more.
Yet even if the Jimmy Whispers live show undercut the wistful charm of the records, if this was how I had to discover a unique artist, I’m OK with it. Along with Geese, Sweet93, and Lionlimb, it was all part of one long night in NYC, where many modes of performance were on display, giving ample opportunity to examine - and marvel - at the mysterious alchemy of live music.
From the archives:
Hot Live Summer
Long Time Coming
Sunday Night’s All Right At Baby’s
All new artists for me, thanks for sharing! Absolutely loving Lionlimb!! Enjoying Geese and sweet93 as well.
I’ve been all over substack preaching the Geese gospel, even more stoked to see them live!