Goose is an American rock band celebrated for its genre-defying sound, adventurous live performances, and fiercely loyal fan community. Comprised of Rick Mitarotonda (vocals, guitar), Peter Anspach (vocals, keys, guitar), Trevor Weekz (bass), and Cotter Ellis (drums), the band has grown from playing Connecticut basements to headlining some of the most iconic stages in the country. Blending infectious songwriting with fearless improvisation, Goose has built its audience organically through relentless touring, a DIY spirit, and a direct connection with fans via platforms like YouTube, Bandcamp, and nugs.net. Goose blends indie groove sensibilities with jam-band improvisation, fusing rock, funk, jazz, and electronic textures into expansive live experiences. Their performances often feature extended improvisational jams and spontaneous exploration, bridging tradition and freshness, with a growing presence in modern jam culture.
Big Modern
The band recently released its sixth studio album, “Big Modern”, marking its third full-length studio LP in just over a year. Together with “Everything Must Go” and “Chain Yer Dragon“, the album completes a prolific creative run that traces both the band’s musical growth and personal evolution. Unlike its two predecessors, which drew from songs written across different eras of Goose’s career, “Big Modern” is rooted entirely in the moment.
A dispatch from interesting times, “Big Modern” captures the strange duality of modern life, simultaneously familiar and surreal. It is an ode to the overwhelming, high-definition experience of now: a world of constant connection, endless information, and reality streaming directly into our minds in real time.
“Big Modern” Is a project born out of Goose’s newfound creative and collaborative freedom. The record opens up a new, future-facing era for the band, introducing 15 tracks that highlight the musical evolution of the four-piece, built on the back of their improvisational prowess. The album beckons listeners with high-energy pop grooves and searing guitar riffs. These highs are punctuated by their musical counterparts. “Big Modern” genre-bending orchestration moves between haunting, driving distortion and gorgeous choral harmonies.
Chain Yer Dragon
Goose released their fifth studio album “Chain Yer Dragon”, The new LP is the band’s second full-length release of the year following April’s “Everything Must Go”.
According to press notes, “Chain Yer Dragon” serves as a “connective tissue between some of the group’s earliest, much-beloved songwriting and its current evolution as a four-piece.” The record largely features songs Goose have performed over the years, including “Echoes of a Rose,” “Empress of Organos,” and “Rockdale,” as well as new tracks “Madalena” and “Royal.”
“There’s a world-building component that feels like the driving force of this record,” shared vocalist Rick Mitarotonda. “Many of these character-driven songs come from a time and place where we were finding our voice musically, and it’s been so gratifying to not only revisit it through the lens of who and where we are now, but to expand on it. These songs have been on a journey, and it feels right for them to finally have a home now.”
“Chain Yer Dragon” is certainly its own world,” added guitarist Peter Anspach. “One that has existed for a while, but has grown along the way. I think “Everything Must Go” was in many ways a broader statement album for the band after three wild years. It kind of symbolized that roller coaster, with many different themes and moments that were born in that pressure cooker.”
Speaking of the lead track, Mitarotanda continued, “‘Madalena’ expanded on the world of “Chain Yer Dragon” in a beautiful way to us, offering a side to the album’s story that wasn’t quite present before. It felt fresh and exciting, and yet in a strange way like it’s been there from the beginning. “Where Everything Must Go” was their most polished studio release to date, “Chain Yer Dragon” feels raw and alive. Long-form jams tracked in real time and then shaped in the studio, it’s as close as you’ll get to hearing Goose live without leaving your couch. The album opens with “Hot Love and the Lazy Poet,” a jaunty tale of a drunken poet chasing love. It’s a perfect opener:
“Madalena” follows as the album’s emotional centerpiece, a ballad weaving dream and reality into a story of longing. That thread continues in “Royal,” where themes of ambition and the harsh realities of the music business strike close to home. “Turbulence & the Night Rays” then expands the scope from one musician to a whole band navigating life on the road, its closing jam evoking shades of Phish’s “Divided Sky.”
“Echo of a Rose” drifts in next. Dreamy, groovy, and offering a hand to guide us forward. Is this mysterious figure Madalena herself? The question lingers as “Mr. Action” arrives, upbeat in sound but lyrically full of deception and doubt. Trevor Weekz’s bouncing bass drives this track, laying the foundation for soaring guitar work and some of Rick Mitarotonda’s most direct lyricism.
“…..” leads into “Dr. Darkness,” a stark exploration of manipulation and inner demons, before the playful and bouncy “Empress of Organos” offers resilience through love and music, fuelled by improvisation. “Jed Stone” shifts the mood, reflecting on aging and mortality, while the fan-favourite jam vehicle “Rockdale” captures Goose at their most interpretive.
The album closes with “Factory Fiction,” a 17-minute opus that’s long been a cornerstone of Goose lore.
“Everything Must Go” and “Chain Yer Dragon” helped propel Goose to No. 2 on Billboard’s Top New Artist Albums chart. Singles “Give It Time” and “Your Direction” charted simultaneously at AAA radio, making Goose the only band to achieve that distinction during the campaign. “Everything Must Go” was met with widespread critical acclaim, earning features in The New York Times, Vulture, GQ, Billboard, SPIN, and more. Rolling Stone praised the band’s ability to balance studio craftsmanship with the spontaneity and energy that define its live shows.
Everything Must Go
its fourth full-length studio release, “Everything Must Go”, released via No Coincidence Records . The band also shared the album’s lead single, “Give it Time”, Produced by previous collaborator D. James Goodwin, Goose’s first new album since 2022’s “Dripfield” underscores the band’s continuing evolution, marking the group’s first studio effort recorded with drummer Cotter Ellis.
“These songs all come from different times and places in a way that captures a part of the journey of the band,” said guitarist Rick Mitarotonda. “It moves through time for us, but not in a tidy, linear way. Like the band, it’s okay for things to feel more like a landscape sometimes and less like a singular cohesive statement. It mixes different moods and ideas and characters.
Dripfield
“Dripfield” is a consistently engaging pop-psychedelic record, like a trippier Father Of The Bride. While it is technically Goose’s third studio LP, it feels like a proper debut, far outstripping its predecessors in terms of quality and ambition. Some tracks slip into funky instrumental tangents, but the focus is on concise and punchy songwriting deriving mainly from Mitarotonda, with Anspach pitching in a George Harrison-sized allotment of tunes.
Given Goose’s surging drawing power as a live act, which already seems greater than even many established indie stars — on this year’s Bonnaroo poster they’re billed higher than Bleachers and Japanese Breakfast — “Dripfield” would seem to warrant coverage as a potential breakout album. But while the record’s announcement last month did garner notices from Rolling Stone and Stereogum, it still seemed muted compared with the attention that much less popular.
Shenanigans Nite Club
The (now) quintet began to experience their truly meteoric ascent. Since then, the group has done an exceptional job taking advantage of their newfound musical opportunities, including being handpicked by Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig to appear on their “40:42” EP, as well as a series of critically-acclaimed virtual performances and subsequent feature-film, dubbed the Bingo Tour, during the 2020 pandemic.
That well-deserved momentum shows absolutely no signs of slowing down with the release of their second full-length studio effort, “Shenanigans Nite Club”. Shenanigans, represents a watershed moment in the band’s history, featuring a strong & cohesive collection of material that showcases the group’s formidable songwriting & improv skills and adventurous musical inclinations. The track-list, which consists of nine songs clocking in at just over an hour, is comprised of a healthy mix of some of Goose’s oldest numbers along with a handful of brand-new tracks that have yet to be performed live.
Starting things off is the disco-infused “So Ready”, which, in addition to being a fixture of Goose’s setlists since its 2015 debut, features some bubbling bass-lines from Trevor Weeks before smoothly segueing into the driving instrumental “Satellite” that acts as a de facto musical coda to the album’s opening track.
Up next is “Madhuvan”, one of Goose’s oldest songs (it was debuted in 2014), which namechecks an ancient holy forest & its associated deities, and features an extended outro jam that highlights the musical dynamic between Anspach’s subtle piano work and Rick Mitarotonda’s searing guitar riffs. “Same Old Shenanigans”, an ode to a now-defunct Connecticut night club (and inspiration for the album title), counts as the album’s lone forgettable track, despite the impressive rhythmic output of Ben Atkind (drums) and newest member, Jeff Arevalo (percussion), who formally joined the band in 2020.
“S.O.S.” is followed by the album’s first new song, “Dawn”, which starts off with some tasteful vocal trickery and leads to a climactic solo from Mitarotonda rife with his trademark tension & release fuelled peaks. The latter half of the track showcases the group’s keen ability to dramatically shift gears from a musical perspective mid-composition as the song seamlessly flows from its jubilant guitar interlude into a gentle & atmospheric finale without missing a beat.
“Flowdown” represents some of the oldest material on the album, as this countrified number was originally written & performed in 2012 by Vasudo, a pre-Goose Connecticut-area jam-band that consisted of Mitarotonda, Weeks & Atkind, among others, and has been a staple of Goose setlists since their 2014 debut. This genuine knee-slapper is pretty much as close to bluegrass as it gets for Goose, and they pull it off with aplomb, featuring some interesting tempo changes underneath the lightning-quick fretwork of Mitarotonda.
The following track, “Spirit of the Dark Horse” should come as a welcome surprise for even the most hardcore fans as it marks the very first original Goose composition, though it has only been performed live a dozen or so times since 2014, making this one of the most sought-after songs in their repertoire. Inspired by a “twelve-minute meditation” between Mitarotonda & Weeks, “Dark Horse” is a funky endeavor that manages to shine despite Mitarotonda’s somewhat questionable use of auto-tune on his lead vocals.
The album comes to a triumphant close with a pair of new & (mostly) instrumental tracks, “Thunder” & “The Labyrinth.” The latter is the album’s longest, at over 12 minutes, and is intricately composed of multiple distinctly sounding, yet cohesive, musical sections that flow effortlessly with masterful segues and serious chops. However, both songs are fine examples of the band’s ability to incorporate their myriad influences into their sound while still managing to keep things fresh and with a clear focus on the future.
Moon Cabin
Since recording its 2016 debut, “Moon Cabin”, in a New Hampshire barn, Goose has steadily refined a sound that merges thoughtful songwriting, virtuosic musicianship, and emotional authenticity. The band has sold out renowned venues including Radio City Music Hall, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Forest Hills Stadium, and Madison Square Garden, while making national television appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and CBS Saturday Morning. With standout performances at major festivals such as Bonnaroo and Austin City Limits,
Goose continues to establish itself as one of the most exciting and innovative live bands of its generation.
Studio albums
- Moon Cabin (2016)
- Shenanigans Nite Club (2021)
- Dripfield (2022)
- Everything Must Go (2025)
- Chain Yer Dragon (2025)
- Big Modern! (2026)
Goose are Rick Mitarotonda (vocals, guitar), Peter Anspach (vocals, keys, guitar), Trevor Weekz (bass) and Cotter Ellis (drums)
