“Lead Up,” the second single off of Goose’s forthcoming new album, Everything Must Go, opens with a distant howl cutting through the stillness. The song begins ominously, showcasing the band’s ethereal register. Its searching lyrics — “oftentimes we worry about the things we waste”— read melancholic, but they are acid-tinged. A pacing snare drum gathers the potential energy of the track, building through a forceful chorus and culminating in the searing notes of guitarist Rick Mitarotonda’s distorted guitar. The song ends as softly as it begins. The echoing lines of the chorus haunt the final measures: “I wish I could take it all away.”
“The record is a collection — of songs, of characters, and of different places and times in our lives,” Mitarotonda says of ‘Lead Up,’ which reemerged recently from a song originally written during his early teenage years. “It was a way for me to explore feelings that I didn’t really understand at the time. Sometimes as you get older it becomes valuable reflecting on things from that time in your life, and how pure and unadulterated expressions can be then.“
Everything Must Go spans Goose’s musical history and arrives via No Coincidence Records on Friday, April 25. The album was heralded earlier in the year with the release of “Give It Time,” a song which, like the solitary voice of doubt that rattles through the mind in our loneliest hours, starts gently but soon begins to build, buoyed by the steadying cadence of a bass drum. As the music intensifies, unfurling with soaring guitar and five-part harmonies, the uncertainty of the opening measures begins to crack, revealing in its place a perpetual message of hope.
The video – filmed, edited, and directed by Michael Nuchareno – features exclusive behind-the-scenes footage and explosive live shows that perfectly match the powerful development and crescendo of the song’s message of strength derived from new beginnings.
The album is the Connecticut-based quintet’s first new studio LP in close to three years. It’s the first release since 2022’s critically acclaimed Dripfield and was produced once again by D. James Goodwin, helping mark the band’s evolution since its inception in 2014. Drawing from the feel of its live performances, the album features a carnivalesque cast of characters — primarily songs written throughout the band’s recent years of growth, including re-imagined live staples and songs that capture the band’s evolving, dynamic sound.
Are you rocking with “Lead Up” from Goose?
