Getting Killed in Detroit

Geese's Emily Green talks vintage guitars, practice routines and selling out

- BY JACOB PAUL NIELSEN

I'M NOT SURE if it's the three-inch heels on her Doc Martens, but Emily Green dwarfs me as she strides across the stage. It's about an hour before her band, Geese, soundchecks for their sold-out show at Detroit's Majestic Theatre.

Officially, it’s day two of the band’s tour, save for a surprise hometown album release show at Banker's Anchor in Brooklyn. That 100-yard stare that only a grueling tour can bestow has yet to set in for Green, and maybe that's why she’s patient enough to let me put my grubby hands on her guitars. I pick up a short-scale Silvertone first. The aluminum edging is the most eye-catching, and the neck is massive.

"I got that guitar at a shop in Brooklyn called RetroFret Vintage Guitars. I went there to buy this old Diastone from the Seventies, but I picked up the Silvertone just to see, and I walked out with that one. It’s a '56 Silvertone Stratotone Newport Model H 42/2. Quite the mouthful."

“It's like a baseball bat,” she continues. “It doesn't play like any modern guitar I've ever used. I suspect builders were building guitars for a different type of player back then. It's better for the warmer, scuzzy amp that you found in the corner of a garage that is sort of breaking up and sounds dusty. That's a bag I like to pull from. I'm using it on, like, half of the new record live.”

"Practicing is boring. Getting better at guitar by playing in a band with people is much more interesting"

The hype surrounding Geese's new record, Getting Killed, is palpable, and for good reason. It’s a dynamic, relentless guitar-driven rock album with echoes of the Velvet Underground, Television and Radiohead. Endorsements from Patti Smith, Nick Cave and Julian Casablancas have added fuel to hyperbolic press statements that Geese are here to reanimate rock's corpse.