The Ryman is a difficult room to ignore with its intimate layout. Even before a set, standing inside it makes the scale of a show feel grand or cinematic with its history in mind. For Geese, though, the room was never a distraction from the set. By the time they had moved through their first three songs from Getting Killed, I had finished shooting and could focus on the rest of the set without an idea of another shot lingering. 

I’ve seen Geese twice before, so I figured I knew roughly what kind of show I’d be walking into. What I did not know was how naturally Getting Killed would translate to a room like the Ryman with their new production. The album can feel claustrophobic and restless on the studio recordings (and was for me on first listen), with songs constantly changing direction and structure, but live, those same ideas opened up considerably. “Husbands” and “Islands of Men” notably gave the show immediate momentum with their open live sound and expanded structures. The former being led by what seems to be singer Cameron Winter’s propelling new guitar and latter having incredible bass accents from Dominic Digesu. “Half Real” settled in the first leg of the show with the more hypnotic inflections Cameron’s solo work is known for. 

That has always been one of my favorite things about seeing Geese, that I can listen to their records all week and still not know exactly what I am going to hear when they play it. The band has gotten particularly good at taking liberty with songs that already sound slightly unhinged, human, or imperfect, depending on how you perceive them. Finding that next degree of freedom is ever-important in an age where quantization and AI are saturating music today, to keep a listener guessing and curious for what’s next. 

“2122” was the next song where I noticed that really clicked. Drummer Max Bassin playing with the tempo and unique percussion gives the song a near physical drive, while Winter’s vocals and timing blur the lines between post-rock frontman and your psychotic second cousins. Following “2122,” Geese turned to more 3D Country tracks with “Crusades” and “Gravity Blues,” giving the set a bit more breathing room and familiarity from their more cohesively produced sophomore record. Following that run though, Geese returned to their more chaotic sound with “Bow Down” from this section of the show with more Getting Killed tracks. 

The lighting here helped immensely. From anywhere in the venue, it was hard to miss what was happening around the band, especially on the back half of “Bow Down” with lights seemingly synced with the drums. The stage would disappear in breaks during the song before opening back up for more striking bridges, making the Ryman’s unique layout and vertical space feel like part of the production. Geese have enough density in their sound that a smaller room can sometimes make everything feel like it’s on top of you whereas here the songs more so open the room up. 

The Ryman deserved that kind of performance too. It’s easy for the history of the room to become the story and the performance to become a cater to that history, but Geese didn’t need that to level their show up and give it significance. The only thing I missed and kept wishing for was a general admission crowd. Reserved seating obviously makes sense here, but “2122” and especially “Trinidad” are songs that are always bringing crazy moshpits. Case in point, when I saw them in Atlanta last fall and the barricade nearly fell in front of me. I found myself wondering what the final stretch would’ve looked like with a pit. 

“Taxes” was probably the most personally surreal moment of the night.

I first heard Geese play at the Blue Room more than a year ago, before Getting Killed had been announced. At the time, no one really knew the song as it was only a rare live song without the context it eventually had on the studio version. After being the album’s lead single, it has become one of the defining songs from the record, a loose, almost devotionally written piece that has an incredible break point where the song feels like it was tied off. Hearing it again then to now really made me realize how far the band had come from the 250-cap room I saw them in. 

The encore brought the set back to Geese’s controlled chaos sound as Cameron expanded on “Trinidad” with a spoken word addition clarifying that the character was driving a pedal tavern instead of a car. He continued with that among other topics that were more difficult to follow, leaving the room in pieces as they ripped through the last outro, almost making the song close like a jam. 

I got one more unexpected piece of the night after the show when I ran into Winter leaving. He signed the setlist I got from the stage after the show along with the black and blue vinyl I got from their show at the Blue Room last year. 

Especially given this, three shows in I still haven’t gotten tired of watching them figure out what they can make of their songs live. The album’s songs already sound like  they are being pulled in one too many directions, and Geese seem to understand that trying to reproduce that chaos to a tee would defeat the point. At the Ryman, they gave those songs a stage and production big enough to match them. And for a band that has spent the last two years expanding exponentially in every direction, the Ryman felt like a pretty fitting place to do it.