On a practical level, Geese are still the group we were introduced to in 2021: vocalist Cameron Winter, guitarist Emily Green, guitarist Foster Hudson, bassist Dom DiGesu, and drummer Max Bassin. But spiritually, Geese have returned as an entirely different prospect. Their new album 3D Country is the sound of a restless, adventurous band redefining themselves.

Anyone who has seen Geese live recently might’ve noticed the band adopted a different vibe onstage — more of a volcanic, unpredictable aesthetic. It turns out that wasn’t a flipside to the recordings of Projector, but foreshadowing that there was more to the story. Knowing they were now beyond teenage basement experiments and were instead making something for an audience who would hear it, Geese felt emboldened. “When we were writing Projector it was about narrowing the scope, trying to do more with less,” Green says. “When we started writing for 3D Country we were trying to do a lot more and seeing what worked and what didn’t.”

While writing 3D Country, Winter was preoccupied with “modern doom,” the way climate change and all manner of looming catastrophes hang on the horizon while we otherwise go about our lives. “It’s about living in spite of just total ambient dread,” he explains. “I wanted to adopt an irreverent, sarcastic way of looking at that.” While Winter wanted to portray a generational experience, he didn’t want to be overly literal or didactic about it. “At this point, everybody I know is already so cynical and defeatist about the state of things, it’s actually hilarious,” he explains. “Younger people make jokes out of the fact that human extinction is on the horizon, and that’s kind of beautiful. I tried to represent that attitude.”

With a heightened ambition fueling 3D Country, the band created a bugged-out, wild, unpredictable ride — an almost phantasmagoric reflection of contemporary life. “It feels like going to the circus and instead of having a good time, everyone is trying to kill you,” Bassin says.

And even if 3D Country is one more stop and not the final destination — Winter hints that what comes next could be just as severe a change — the album makes one thing very clear about Geese. This is not the band we thought they were, and no one can say where they might take us next.

$1 from each ticket goes to the Lollapalooza Arts Education Fund, a partnership between Lollapalooza, Chicago Public Schools (CPS), and Chicago’s leading arts education institution, Ingenuity, that distributes funding for transformative arts programs to CPS schools with the least amount of arts access.