17-07-2025
Feature Video: Geese - Taxes
New York rockers Geese have caught us completely off guard this week with a stunning work of artistsic misdirection, 'Taxes'. Stick with this one until the end. You will (probably) not regret it.
Directed by Noel Paul, whose résumé includes music videos for the likes of Danny Brown, Mitski, Black Midi, Father John Misty and too many more works that will be familiar to regular rage viewers. Noel takes us down, down, down into this slow yet inevitable descent into madness and chaos, with all the bloody violence of a mosh-pit from in the depths of hell, and the painterly sensibilties of a baroque-period master.
"The idea of a crowd in a small rock club going crazy came from the band." says Noel of the video's concept. "My approach was to take inspiration from medieval paintings of damned souls writhing in hell and chiaroscuro Caravaggios of people getting tortured and stuff."
Observant viewers will be able to pick out all kinds of nods to mostly baroque artworks, emerging out from the tenebrous blackness of the dancefloor; Rubens, Carravaggio, and even some Francisco Goya. But even if you don't catch every musuem-worthy reference, the real intention of all this mayhem is just straight vibes.
"To make sure it was more about vibe and less about heavy-handed references, we massively undercranked the camera so the footage would fly by so fast that people wouldn't have time to think about it." Says Noel, of the camera techniques that give the latter half of the video an ethereal, dreamlike quality. "My DoP Lea Taillefer, her team, my movement director Monica Mirabile , and our awesome cast did a great job moving in the way you need to move when you're shooting at such low FPS."
With a music video that features crowds clawing at one another in the darkness, it's pretty apt that 'Taxes' arrives as the lead single off of Geese's third studio album Getting Killed, which is due out in September.
Like the saying goes, nothing is certain except death and…
