One Song for You from an Album that Brings Me Happiness, Entire and Incontestable

The AI that answers every Google question these days tells me an existential crisis is “a period of intense questioning about life’s meaning, purpose, and one’s place in the world, often triggered by major life events.”

According to that robot’s definition, this human here is consistently experiencing between one and three of these at any given moment.

Books help, and other people help, but nothing helps as much, for me, as signing along at volume to the right album, one that matches the particular frequency of the feelings and thoughts I have rattling around inside.

And right now, for me, that album is Getting Killed by Geese, and I know I’m not alone because this is part of what Nick Cave wrote about listening to these songs:

“– all worry is laid to waste. The endorphins rushing wild from the freezing water, the music pounding through my body, the caffeine, the fucking ducks and the God-roiling sky – no what-ifs, no yeah-buts, no what-abouts, no caveats, at all. I am made happy, and that happiness is entire and incontestable.”

That is exactly how this album feels to me. In the alchemy of a flexible, talented, powerful band and the alternatingly esoteric and universal lyrics sung by vocalist Cameron Winter in his deep, emotive voice dripping with authenticity, I am able to feel the music in my soul and somehow feel less alone in this wild world.

It’s a feeling I remember vividly from standing in my dorm room in the last days of junior year listening to Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, like the music is cracking something open inside me so I can expand and experience the world differently. (If you have an album that feels like this for you, I’d love to hear about it.)

And since I’ve already written way more trying to explain the psychic power of Geese’s new collection of songs than the 34 individual words Cameron sings on this track, please enjoy “Au Pays du Cocaine” from Geese, a song that is currently being scratched into my soul. If you like it, I recommend the full album for the appropriate dosage of transcendence:

Do you have a different album you love this year? Tell me about it! jed@kindandfunny.com.