Words from Charlie Warzel- 

Picture a crossroads. A way station. You pull in, slough off your burden. The journey is long. It is equal parts existential, absurd, beautiful, tragic, and fun. Most often, it’s hard to tell how far along you are; sometimes you forget you’re on the path altogether. This is the job of the way station, the depot, the fork in the road. It is there to help you remember. It is a marker—of time, of intention, of direction. It can be a moment of solemn reflection or celebration. A crossroads is an opportunity. It is a chance to remember and rejoice or to put the past behind and start anew. 

Everything Must Go is a way station. More than ten years in, the album represents both a creative and personal way station for the Goose as they explore new configurations, tell new stories, and push new creative boundaries. In one sense, this album is a culmination—a repository of songs spanning a lifetime of musical exploration. It is also a chance for a new beginning, a moment to embrace history, before beginning something new. The directive is right there in the title—Everything Must Go—this is a moment of emptying the notebook, of abandoning preciousness and preconceptions. Rejuvenation, rebirth—they all begin with reflection.

The process need not be maudlin. In fact, it should be joyous. This album is a collection—of characters, moods, and of stories. Their assemblage, track by track, offers a narrative arc that is a glorious accident of history. None of these songs were written to follow the other, and yet Everything Must Go moves naturally. It takes care of the listener, its cadence and intensity varying, from the five-part harmonic celebration of ‘Give it Time,’ to the ethereal howl of ‘Lead Up.’ ‘Your Direction’ coasts down the highway while ‘Thatch’ kicks down the door. If ‘Animal’ beckons us to dance through the jungle of our minds, then it is followed by ‘Red Bird,’ a song that beckons us to see that same internal space as a cathedral. These songs are spacious—textured renditions of familiar voices and melodies that stand alone. Played live, the tracks are wondrously ephemeral and unique—dancing flames and tendrils of smoke that evaporate into the night sky as we dance along. On Everything Must Go, they become monuments. They are tactile, lived in, and fully realized documents of a musical past and present, etched into the band’s history. Everything Must Go is not a road map but little directions appear everywhere: Turn it up and let it go. This is love. You’re allowed to feel it now. You’ve got magic in your hands. 

But there is more than just a vibe here. There is buoyancy and joy, as well as fear and uncertainty. Above all else, there is a searching quality to these songs. Listen closely and you will hear the crossroads in every corner of Everything Must Go. Some are playful: I was thinkin’ bout moving in your direction. Others suggest a more existential choice: The fear of devastation/the will to build again. Unanswerable questions lurk inside earworming melodies. There is doubt: Is this really what I wanted? Will I ever be? Anything but a pretender/ Living inside of a dream? And genuine searching: Should I be dancing toward the darkness/ Or marching toward the light?” 

These lyrics are conversations with the self—the kind that keep us up at night, playing on a loop on the insides of our eyelids. They are struggles—not just about where to go, but how to be: I was imposturous/ I didn’t trust/ Superfluous. It’s not who I am.

Everything Must Go offers a series of unlikely avatars that include, but are not limited to: Werewolves, iguanas, street preachers, and jungle primates with admirable core strength. No matter the narrator, each song offers a lyrical examination of the self that, taken together, reflects the journey of the band from its earliest roots to where it is today. That fundamental question—who am I?—haunts each character as they search and grapple with the pain and pleasure of self-discovery and transformation.

But every crossroads also offers a path forward. The searching present throughout Everything Must Go concludes in the album’s final track. ‘How It Ends,’ opens with a guitar solo that rings out like a horizon line on an endless highway—a reminder that every ending is a beginning as well. The chorus itself is a transformation, borrowing lyrics from a previous track to convey a message of hope and clarity: All that I am fades away/And I can finally see/everything and everybody I ever loved.

That question—who am I?—has an answer now. It is a discovery that is elemental and beautiful in its simplicity. And so it is only fitting that the album ends with the declaration: Tell them my friends that we played in a band and we sang on ‘till the end of the road

Everything Must Go leaves us with a sense of finality, of closure. The past is to be remembered, but there’s no time for nostalgia. The future is calling and the course is already set—a destination where the skyline meets the road.