Artist of the Month is an accolade given to an up-and-coming artist or group who is poised for the big time. In November 2021, we give the nod to Brooklyn post-rockers Geese as they drop their highly buzzed debut album, Projector.
Everyone’s been robbed of in-person experiences on way or another in this unprecedented pandemic era. Many already-plugged-in teenage musicians have seen some of their most formative years shunted online. For every breakout success spurred by TikTok, there’s a dozen more who haven’t been so lucky. How does an aspiring 16-year-old artist, for example, expand their horizons when live music is shuttered? How can they possibly hone their stage presence without stages on which to perform?
“I remember for a minute in quarantine, we would just get together and watch live videos together,” says Gus Green, guitarist for Consequence’s November Artist of the Month, Geese. “There’s a lot of YouTube rabbit holes.”
Geese are living the Gen Z life while putting New York City guitar bands back on the radar for what feels like the first time since years. When you hear about musicians born in the early 2000s, people who view the ’80s the way millennials did the ’60s, you may expect genreless hybrids of drowsy synths, half-rapped verses, and algorithm-friendly emo hooks. There are the ’90s indebted Snail Mails and pop-punk-reviving Meet Me @ the Altars out there, but few make references to Television, Yes, and Pink Floyd like Geese do.
Whereas bands of decades past may have come acts like these by spinning their older family members’ CDs and vinyl, Geese discovered them the new fashioned way. “You can find some really crazy stuff if you just kinda dig through Spotify, suggested artists and playlists and Discover Weeklies,” says Green. Then there’s guitarist Foster Hudson, who was challenged by a music instructor to explore a new album every day for a month; he went for the overachieving goal of a record a day for a year.
