Geese at Osheaga 2026

The Brooklyn-based indie rock band, Geese, has been the subject of contentious discourse in the last year amongst music critics, chronically online indie-rock-heads, and that one friend you know who can’t help but tell you their new music hot-take. Stop by the CJLO station office and check out our “Geese Discourse Jar” (25 cents per mention) relic as proof. The band took to the Forest stage at the OSHEAGA Music and Arts Festival on Friday, July 31st, to perform for a crowd of both die-hard fans and curious festival-goers passing by the last set of the night to see what all the fuss was about.

The band was scheduled to perform from 9:40-10:55pm that evening, positioned in the middle of (and ending five minutes later than) Twenty One Pilots, the headliner for Friday’s lineup. As a reformed TØP fan from my pre-teen years, it was tricky to pick between the two acts– do I relive the nostalgia of my wannabe emo phase or live my truth as what the kids are calling a “performative male”? I must admit that I’ve been a fan of Geese for the last couple years or so after Cameron Winter’s solo album, Heavy Metal, was released in December of 2024. I promptly dove into their discography looking to hear more of the charm from Winter’s record and their 2023 album 3D Country quickly became a repeat-listen for me. So, for the sake of current relevancy, Geese it was.

Waiting for the show to begin, I watched born and raised Atlanta rapper JID perform the last bit of his set next door on the Valley stage. While the music was great, it had an awkward ending; midway through his last song the mic was cut and the glaringly bright neon OSHEAGA graphics appeared behind him, signaling his set was over. He lingered on stage looking confused, put his tote bag on, and took off after some time of making faces at the crowd as if to say: “Is this really it?” It was truly a firsthand look at how festivals like these function: standing in stark contrast to a typical smaller venue show, everything is almost perfectly timed and there is never really room for an encore.

After some short-winded chanting from the Geese crowd they appeared on the neighbouring stage and began with the track “Husbands” from their most recent record from 2025, Getting Killed. It’s my favourite off the album and I couldn’t help but feel silly to be one of the only people singing along. After performing the title track off that same album, Winter's first words to the crowd echoed through the tree-enclosed outdoor space: “Nous sommes Angine de Poitrine.” 

I found this statement innocently funny but also kind of absurd. Mainly because I had a conversation with a professor earlier this year in which I had compared the two bands. He told me, “I don’t understand the comparison. Angine de Poitrine rings as just a couple guys doing weird rock stuff and Geese seems to me like a typical up-and-coming indie rock group.” And while I agreed wholeheartedly, I expressed that I felt both groups had gained popularity online in a way that is becoming increasingly prevalent and at the same time very unprecedented. Through varying degrees of algorithmic influence on both social media and music streaming platforms, bands like Geese and Angine de Poitrine have amassed massive amounts of attention online and subsequently, polarizing debates about their credibility as standout rock acts. The comparison may still be invalid, as Geese has had an arguably more controversial involvement in their social media marketing, but Winter’s joke feels notable nonetheless. [I won’t get into it here, but see John Semley’s WIRED Article “The Fanfare Around the Band Geese Actually Was a Psyop” for context]

Winter then played a snippet of “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen off his phone and the band moved into tracks from 3D Country, starting with “2122”. About a minute into the song, someone next to me was pushed into the crowd in front of us and I genuinely thought a fight had broken out. When the guy turned around with a big smile on his face, pushed the other guy back, and more people started joining in, I realized I had found myself in the middle of a mini mosh circle at the back of the crowd. This was where the energy really picked up for me. People were no longer just standing around, swaying to the melancholic rhythms feeling unsure of themselves; they were having fun.

And so was I. Even though Getting Killed was a huge success and seems to have put a lot of people on the Geese radar, nothing beats the wackiness of 3D Country. 

On the other hand the band itself seemed exhausted, which is pretty fair. They’ve been doing their second round of touring for their Getting Killed Again Tour and have been doing festival after festival all summer long. “I thought we had five minutes left, turns out we’ve got twenty”, Winter said to the crowd and laughed. 

In terms of their longevity as an up-and-coming indie rock band, I think this was an apt metaphor (can you tell I love metaphors?) for the band’s explosive success. While recent discourse has questioned whether their rise in popularity was rightly earned, Geese seems to have plenty of time left to prove otherwise. 

Sophie Caza is the host of Everything Everywhere, exploring music from all genres through an ethnographic perspective every Thursday from 9-10am on CJLO1690AM.