Show Review - Goose 9/24/24 Eugene, OR

High Ceiling

Goose’s September tour continued in Eugene last night as the band once again visited a gorgeous outdoor venue, this time the Cuthbert Amphitheater. Built in a bandshell style with a small section of seats and tiered lawn, there once again seemed not to be a bad seat in the house, coupled with perfect sound and light.

As with the previous two in Carnation and Troutdale, the band was on fire improvisationally – but the centrepieces of Saturday and Sunday’s shows just seemed to be building toward what happened last night, a total opening of the floodgates in the second set as Goose delivered some of the finest jamming of the tour.

The show began just after sunset with a dreamy “Lead the Way,” multi-instrumentalist Peter Anspach’s Vintage Vibe textures floating across the evening air accompanied by guitarist Rick Mitarotonda’s soaring leads as part of a concise rendition of the emotional song.

“All I Need” was tapped next for a dose of early jamming, delving into a shimmering minor-key space thanks to drummer Cotter Ellis’ tumbling tom work. Mitarotonda worked some atypically heavy delay effects into his leads as percussionist Jeff Arevalo made himself known with some great timbale fills.

Bassist Trevor Weekz began to move the band smoothly into a new progression that the band has toyed with at several stops on the tour, combining an emotional pair of chords with a darker and sharper-edged breakdown section. Goose hit a strong peak in this motif before Mitarotonda confidently led a transition into chunky funk.

Anspach laid something on his organ to keep a bedrock chord sustaining as he hammered low-end piano and then clav, Mitarotonda switching to aggressive rhythm work along with the drums and bass. After some time in this zone, Ellis initiated a double-time switch and we were treated to a runaway freight train-style peak before an abrupt (and somewhat rocky) return to the song at Mitarotonda’s call.

The first “Draggin’ the Line” since October 31, 2021 (230 shows) came next as Goose continued the trend of emptying their bustout cover arsenal in 2024. The Tommy James cover originally was performed as part of the band’s Austin Powers “Netflox & Chill” Halloween show in 2021 and will hopefully be appearing more than once every three years going forward – it fits their sound perfectly and the laid-back shuffle of the song opened up ample space for some relaxed melodic interplay from Mitarotonda and Anspach throughout.

A ripping extra-mustard “Butterflies” showed off Anspach’s thick and grimy tone on his new Fender Custom guitar ahead of the 86-show bustout of “The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show.” This Band cover has long been a fan favourite and the band finally stretched their legs on it a little bit after the last few performances came with no jam at all. Anspach once again dove back into clav-land with some monstrously distorted tone before a Mitarotonda solo wrapped things up.

From there, “Butter Rum” did what it does best these days – deliver 17 minutes of highly danceable disco grooves. Anspach went heavy on the delayed Vintage Vibe atop a low synth drone from the OB-6 before building to a calypso-influenced (thanks to Ellis) peak and return to the song. While this definitely is far from my ideal or favourite song to see at a Goose show, it’s hard to deny that they are playing the hell out of the jams within the ode to a muffin in 2024.

While many fans (myself included) expected a “Thatch” to open the second set, the band was clearly storing up some bangers for the upcoming California shows and instead opted for a short-rest performance of “Pancakes.” It felt like they were on a mission to redeem themselves for the relatively pedestrian jam in Montana last week and proceeded to deliver a 33-minute behemoth that beats the next-longest (3/4/22) by nearly seven minutes and stands as the seventh-longest Goose jam ever.

Sticking within the song proper for a few minutes, Mitarotonda and Anspach both probed the space for musical inspiration, eventually settling on a driving mode thanks to sharp piano chords. Ellis began to pick up speed and intensity along with Mitarotonda, who engaged a very subtle bit of synth’d out delay to his leads as Anspach introduced a subtle synth drone.

Things took a turn for the minor as Mitarotonda turned to vamping and Anspach hit the clav, going full grime for a brief spell – but this was not to last as the guitarist quickly spaced things out into a mellow major key. This was the first indication of the multi-section nature of the Eugene “Pancakes,” a jam where Goose eschewed their normal style of building upon an idea or two for long periods in favour of jumping all over the map and back again – a style of jamming that has long been a favourite of mine.

Bassist Trevor Weekz stepped out melodically as Anspach brought in pulsating Moog Muse chords, sweeping the filter back and forth to give it the feeling of pushing out and back over the crowd. Ellis kept a consistent tempo around Mitarotonda’s gentle phrases before Anspach returned to piano, tickling the ivories beautifully in the evening air.

While still remaining mostly within a “Pancakes”-like motif at this point, it felt as though we were far from done with the jam as the quintet spent the next few minutes building in their patented 2024 bliss style, the band coalescing on a gorgeous progression as Mitarotonda tugged at heartstrings with impossibly-emotional lead lines.

Hitting a soaring peak with Anspach making the switch to organ, Goose reached what was the first of clear exit ramps to the jam around the 16-minute mark as I expected Mitarotonda to steer us around back to the conclusion of the song – the jam would have been very good at this point.

Instead, we drove sideways into a rocking vamp as Anspach stuck to organ in an atypical move for him, going with some percussive chords and riffs while Mitarotonda went for some vamps. Entering a motif that felt almost like they were just playing “Switchin’,” Anspach unleashed on his Hammond C3 for several minutes as Arevalo upped the momentum with a well-timed entry on shaker. Weekz drove things with a deep bass line for a little while ahead of Mitarotonda taking the reins, still battling back and forth with Anspach’s organ for a bit until he firmly drove back into peak mode.

Once again, this would have been a solid conclusion to the jam and there was another clear point to build things back into “Pancakes” but Mitarotonda was far from finished as he led things into a heavier and dark motif. Ellis followed quickly and slowed the tempo into a vicious half-time as Anspach took to filthy clav around a “Moby Dick”-like riff.

Headbanging Goose is some of the best – though it doesn’t happen often – and this part of the jam had the whole crowd absolutely locked in for the volcanic peak. Once again finishing with the idea relatively quickly, the band cooled off and returned to a dreamlike space, Anspach’s Vintage Vibe going full vibrato as the band sat in a final bliss turn to bring the jam past the half-hour mark.

A blazing return to “Pancakes” proper had the crowd in a joyous uproar before a perfect cooldown came with “Bob Don.” A powerful solo from Mitarotonda led into what might be the best “With” section yet, dripping in psychedelia as the band built it up to a wall of noise before bridging into “Tumble.”

The second “makeup” version from Montana in this set quickly demonstrated it would be following the same quality of improv from the “Pancakes” as Mitarotonda and Anspach dove headlong into some stanky two-guitar funk, locking in on Weekz’ earworm ascending riff he’s infused into the Type I segments this year.

Anspach did his best Cory Wong impression, as he is wont to do, as things simmered for a while before the band smoothly slid out of “Tumble” proper into a spacey jam akin to the progression they’ve been using within “Yeti” this tour.

Switching to phaser piano as things took off, Anspach kept the progression up as Ellis used his snare more texturally than as a drum, pounding across his toms as the band danced up to an excellent peak.

Coming down into a build just before the 15-minute mark, I was expecting your usual big build up into a screaming motif – but my expectations were once again bucked as things got serene almost to the point of silence (this is where I got a little bit frustrated with the crowd, who started clapping as if the song was over).

Ellis subtly kept his hi-hat going on the tempo as Mitarotonda, Anspach, and Weekz danced around each other, eventually turning minor again and going into a klezmer-sounding jam. Anspach threw in some crazy psychedelic OB-6 tones for good measure as the motif took shape, picking up steam with strong guitar/piano interplay as the band ripped back into “Tumble,” riding a wave of momentum through the end of the song.

Closing the set with “Slow Ready,” the band was playing with house money at this point and carried that through to the “(dawn)” encore, though time constraints prevented them from giving the second part of “SOS” its full due – but even truncated solos from Anspach and Mitarotonda were a joyous way to end the PNW leg of September tour.

After an uncertain run in Montana, the band has clearly found their momentum again and will hopefully kick off their California run tomorrow with the same aggression and commitment to exploring new spaces. Things are primed to be huge over the next three shows – including Goose’s tenth anniversary on Friday – and I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us.

Tour continues tomorrow in San Diego – a livestream is available exclusively to nugs subscribers.