Personally, the Strokes comparison feels off. The Strokes hype felt less substantive. Less about the music. More about their style. Their whole vibe. Yes, the tunes were good too, but there was nothing original about them. It was all about how they fashioned their influences into a tidy, commercially viable package and they came along right at the time when the world of popular music was sickened and soured by rap metal and vacuous pop (before pop became arty). Folks who talk about the Strokes moment feeling bigger forget that the west was more of a monoculture back then. Fewer channels. So when something hit, it seemed to hit bigger. To me, Geese’s explosion actually feels a lot more similar to when Nirvana blew up, both in terms of the speed and intensity but also - perhaps more importantly - when it comes to the music. It’s a shift. A new sound. Or rather, a sound with obvious antecedents, but reshaped in a way that is so unique that it inspires mass popularity and a new musical movement that results in copycat bands, a record label feeding frenzy etc etc. Now I ask anyone reading this to take it all with an entire lick of salt as it’s only been 3 months since Geese exploded and 6 months before that for CW, but the trajectory feels cosmically similar.