Geese in Milan: bridging the gap and fuelling the rock legend
A full house at the Circolo Magnolia for New York’s hottest band
The Brooklyn band, the latest cult favourite on the international indie scene, made their Italian debut at Unaltrofestival 2026. Amidst the hype surrounding their latest album and a few rumours, one thing is certain: these four lads really know how to play live.
My first time in Italia
The Geese’s first concert in Italia was a double surprise. The first: managing to sell out the Circolo Magnolia in the week following Ferragosto, and what’s more, during a summer that seems determined to break every temperature record known to Western civilisation. The second, and more important one: setting aside everything that has been said, written and gossiped about New York’s trendiest band over the past year, Geese are actually really good musicians. It seems like a modest observation after months of headlines that have hailed them as the new saviours of rock ’n’ roll: their latest album, *Getting Killed*, released in 2025, topped the New York Times’ end-of-year charts; the Guardian has already bestowed upon them the role that cyclically falls to some young guitar-driven band; a mythology has built up around the band and its frontman – Cameron Winter, a dark, handsome figure with thick, long hair, just as one would expect – consisting of grandiose comparisons, as if Geese could not simply be ‘Geese’. To complicate matters further, there is the issue of Chaotic Good, a digital marketing agency that has worked with both Geese and Winter (who also released a solo album in 2024): when it emerged that the company had run online campaigns for both, accusations of an ‘industry plant’ and a ‘psyop’ multiplied – in other words, the suspicion that part of Geese’s sudden rise to fame had been carefully orchestrated. It’s all interesting and entirely possible – at least until, towards the end of the concert, the single ‘Taxes’ kicks in and, in the face of all this talk, you find yourself saying an equally bombastic ‘who cares?’.
At their only Italian gig, on 19 August, as part of the Unaltrofestival 2026 line-up, the Brooklyn quartet played for an hour and a half with an attitude that was anything but fake. It may not have been perfect in every respect, but the songs succeeded in the noble art of transforming themselves from their studio versions, getting a bit grungier, slowing down and speeding up. In short, they were all brilliant: Max Bassin on drums, Dominic DiGesu on bass, Emily Green on guitar, oscillating between raw distortion and dreamy melodies. Joining the quartet was Sam Revaz, the keyboardist who accompanies them live. And then, of course, standing out above all, Cameron Winter, born in 2002: an intense yet versatile voice, a theatrical presence, and that anti-star nonchalance so beloved of Generation Z. So anti-star, in fact, that he asked a lad in the audience if he could play anything. When the lad replied, ‘I can play the drums’, Winter invited him onto the stage; Bassin made way for him and, to a round of applause, the lad played ‘Bow Down’ alongside the rest of the band. Thirty years ago, the Eddie Vedder of the moment would have leapt from the stage into the crowd: styles and times change, but the intention remains the same – to bridge the gap between those on stage and those in front of them. It is perhaps this, rather than the aesthetic of being the heirs to The Strokes – with whom they are often compared – that explains why Geese seem to be more than just a band that’s been successfully marketed.
In Cowboy nudes, 100 horses, Au pays du cocaine and Fantasies/Survival, one can sense a talent for crafting memorable melodies.
So, are they the saviours of rock, or simply a phenomenon amplified by those who know their way round algorithms?
