Author: Eva

The amount of scarves this song has me pulling from its sleeves makes me feel like a clown about to cry at a party. Just when I think I’m done, there’s more. Here’s the official audio, and the video (video’s audio is slightly different).

Caveats before we begin:

1. This is my own interpretation of the work. While I proudly belong to Geese Nation, I am not actually affiliated with the band :[ and cannot claim my arguments to be the truth or what they intended.
2. That said. I am 100% right about everything.

This is not Cameron Winter’s usual stream-of-consciousness style of writing like we see with Geese’s 3D Country and his recent solo album, Heavy Metal. This time, “Taxes” reads like a premeditated poem layered with double meanings and purpose. Here, we have a writer who made a deliberate switch in writing style as a way to lead by example. The band plays with form both in the doubling of lyrics and the change in the middle and in doing so reveals the truth about our own patterns. We do not consume to satisfy ourselves, but to prevent others from surviving, using conformity as a means to unjustly absolve ourselves of guilt. That is the key. The characters in “Taxes” act upon others. Geese tells us to examine this choice with unwavering empathy, and convinces us to follow a moral code. Though, it’s not enough to simply recognize we’re hurting others, but to feel the same pain as we have caused.

The amount of doubling is noteworthy in how it both emphasizes each idea and presents choices. Max Bassin said in an interview, “We really loved the switch that the song does right in the middle…It’s one song and then it’s another song.” In terms of form alone, we have two songs, six couplets with repetition, and light versus dark. The single cover art has a bright blue sky in contrast to the dark video. The album art has a trumpet and a gun. A classic dichotomy. Don’t be bad. Be good instead! But how can you decide what’s good in a world that always changes?

There are three characters in this song, and all of them suck in their own special way. The speaker breaks hearts despite knowing it’s wrong. The tax collector (whose identity is debatable) takes from the speaker without permission. The doctor tries to fix other people’s problems rather than address their own. Acting as a herald, the speaker calls all three of them out on their bullshit because he himself is faced with an empathy so painful it rivals the depths of hell. All three of them have the ability to change the direction of their behavior from others to the self. Not as a way to stand among their peers in conformity of what might today be considered morally good, but to be fully aware of themselves.

“Physician, Heal Thyself,” is a proverb that basically means to deal with your own problems before you try to fix others, like the flight attendants say. The doctor, who famously heals others, is told to heal themselves. If we follow the logical pattern, we can also assume the speaker usually breaks other people’s hearts and will break his own from now on. And I don’t believe we have an egotistical Cameron calling himself a hotshot heartbreaker. Rather, we have a speaker who has either discovered empathy for the first time or has been broken by the same harm as he’s inflicted. There is no apology, only a recognition of self and a resolve to change.

We’re all poets here, but ultimately the song still slaps whether we’re being literal or metaphorical. The collector has plenty of things to fix in their own house before coming after our speaker, who will fight to the death rather than lose whatever he’s holding onto. In the third verse, he’s holding onto his heart so nobody but him can break it. So why isn’t this a love song? 

Geese’s last album 3D Country and Cameron Winter’s solo album Heavy Metal both deal with themes of loneliness and romantic love. This time, we as listeners are certainly allowed to take this song as a romantic lament. And as a standalone song, that could work. However, the nature of the video alone screams social commentary. That plus the album’s title, Getting Killed, and the album cover of Emily Green with both a herald’s trumpet and gun pointed at the viewer prevent me from calling this a love anthem. More importantly, I trust that the writer who brought us “Love Takes Miles” would not fold a love song beneath this many unrelated references. Instead, these elements suggest judgement and rebirth.

The video begins as if shot on an audience member’s phone. You see their POV as they weave through the crowd and get closer to the stage. It looks like a chill, intimate concert that would make you feel safe and respected, as the audience easily allows the viewer to the front despite their lateness to the show. But when Geese hits the final note in the 2nd verse, “down,” the sound and energy expand, and the audience becomes chaotic and violent. What a word to change things, eh? Like a command – Down with civility baby, we’re eating feet!

Through the video and use of references, and by making a lyrical and sonic choice that crafts this song into doubles, Geese leads the way to the bright light. First we gotta kill our past selves, along with the parts that yearn to destroy others who are already ahead of us or rising there. Which hopefully is not an everyday experience for you but I digress. Then, we gotta accept the truth of what’s left. Chin up! There’s always another song to change into.

Cheers,
Eva

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P.S. Some have called this “rapture vibes”. To thee I say: Ye who knows more about Jesus may write thine own essay. I didn’t even know “Physician, Heal Thyself” was a thing until my friend Emmett told me. Thanks, Emmett!

Sources: Geese, Taxes Audio, Taxes Video, Cure Dolly, Henry David Thoreau, Saturn Devouring His Son, Self Reliance, Thanks for the photo, Thanks for the Max Interview, Actual Max Interview (Beg. 46:50), NPR tax conversation