No Expectations 096: Feel It Now
A Taste Profile interview with Goose’s Peter Anspach. Plus, three album recommendations and the Favorite Tracks of 2025 (So Far) playlist.
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Headline song: Goose, “Feel It Now” (6/21/24)
Thanks for being here. This week marks the return of the No Expectations Taste Profile interview series and I’m so stoked it’s with Peter Anspach from Goose. Because of my full-time job at PBS Chicago, I can only interview artists on nights and weekends but Anspach was gracious enough to fit my schedule. What a fun chat.
Also, don’t sleep on the album recommendations at the bottom of this newsletter. I know readers will dig the new LP from Rose City Band but the other albums I recommend from Kingston, New York post-punks Open Head as well as Peruvian electronic artist Alejandra Cárdenas (aka Ale Hop) and Congolese guitarist Titi Bakorta are great too. As always, you can sign up for a paid subscription or tell a friend about a band you read about here. Every bit helps and keeps this project going.
2025 - Favorite Tracks (So Far) Playlists
Apple Music // Spotify // Tidal
Before the interview, I wanted to share that my annual best of playlists are now live on your favorite streaming service. It’s at 71 songs already. TIDAL and Apple Music will be the most regularly updated (I no longer use Spotify but will sporadically add songs there since that’s where most newsletter readers still listen).
Taste Profile: Peter Anspach (Goose)
Besides the Grateful Dead and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Goose was the band I listened to most in 2024. With all three, it’s a numbers game. You can listen to your favorite 30-minute album 40 times but if you check out a few three-hour live shows, your listening minutes will get into the thousands quickly. While the Connecticut improvisational rock band had been on my radar since 2019, I only gave them a serious chance last year. I knew they’d be playing Chicago’s Salt Shed and decided to immerse myself in their discography before I saw them live for the first time. What started as an idea for a fish out of water newsletter that could at the very least be a funny experiment, turned into a genuine appreciation and love for their music. I wrote about my journey with the band a lot more in September, which you can read here.
A little of what I wrote then:
A few months ago, I decided to try again, and watching a May concert they posted on YouTube finally sold me. Their Solshine Reverie show featured songs like “Tumble,” which boasted a feel that evoked “Scarlet Begonias,” a goofy but infectious track called “Hot Love & The Lazy Poet,” and earnest covers of Prince and Kylie Minogue. Though I still had reservations (many due to fear that my jam friends who hated them would roast me), I knew there was something to this music that I had to dig deeper into.
Goose are a jam band but they consciously subvert the genre’s stereotypes. “I mean, [jam band] is a demeaning title,” Mitoratonda said in a 2022 interview with Steven Hyden, “Because frankly there are a lot of cheesy and not great jam bands that have existed over time.” When the Grateful Dead kickstarted this movement more than a half-century ago, they did it by combining old American styles of music like blues, folk, country, and early rock’n’roll with unpredictable setlists and avant-garde improvisational jams. Phish did the same but with funk, classic rock, prog, and reggae. Goose, however, use a more contemporary palette: They draw from big tent indie like Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Radiohead, and as well as jam mainstays like Phish and Dave Matthews Band. They write relentlessly hummable songs and take pains to create fully-formed studio LPs with collaborator D. James Goodwin, who’s worked on LPs by No Expectations favorites Bonny Light Horseman, Kevin Morby, and Whitney. If you prefer proper albums, start with their 2022 effort Dripfield. If you want to jump into the shows, the recent release Live at the Capitol Theatre is an exhaustive primer on their catalog.
One of the reasons getting into Goose was easier than I expected was because of keyboardist, guitarist, and singer Peter Anspach. Though Rick Mitarotonda is Goose’s lead guitarist and main frontman, Anspach is the band’s heart. He’s the Bob Weir of the group, the one who talks to the audience between songs, and the member who perpetually seems thrilled to be onstage playing music with his friends. Just watch him take in the moment when Bruce Hornsby sat in with the band in 2023 to perform “The Way It Is”—his enthusiasm and joy are infectious. His songs in the band repertoire, like “Feel it Now,” “Red Bird,” “White Lights,” and “The Whales,” are consistently some of their very best. Plus, though he learned piano when he joined Goose in 2017, he’s become one of the most impressive players touring right now.
Goose and Anspach are gearing up for a massive 2025. The band just sold out a headlining show at Madison Square Garden, announced their fourth studio album Everything Must Go, which is out April 25, and will embark on a U.S. tour throughout the year. (I’ll be at the final show of their Milwaukee run and all three nights in my hometown of Grand Rapids next month). More importantly for Anspach, he just got engaged to his longtime girlfriend on a trip to Japan. Beyond the engagement, we didn’t really talk about any of that for his Taste Profile interview at No Expectations. Instead, Anspach listed three of the most formative things of his life and three things he’s really into now. Read on below for this fun and illuminating chat with a total chiller.
Formative movie scene: Lady & The Tramp - “Bella Notte”
So you chose not just the movie Lady & The Tramp but one scene from it—the famous spaghetti scene. When was the first time you saw that movie?
I was maybe two years old when I saw Lady & The Tramp. I probably couldn't understand a lot of it but what stuck with me was just that scene and the song. The two guys, Joe and Tony, the Italian restaurant owners who sang that song for some reason, really stuck with me. When I was a kid, I would do a thing where I'd have my mom get the video camera out, and I would perform like one of the guys with a wooden spoon as a mandolin. My dad would come in with another wooden spoon-type item as an accordion. We'd be Joe and Tony, and we would sing that song together, which was such a great time. That was my first memory of playing a song and a song having a major impact on me.
That’s very sweet. It’s wild to think about what moved you at that age.
That was played at our local grocery store Stew Leonard’s by these big animatronic robots. One of them was a dog and the other one was a cow. And they would play "Down by the Riverside." And I would just love to just sit there in the cart as my mom would shop. I would just watch them over and over again play "Down by the Riverside."
My childhood grocery store did not have an animatronic band. I had a similar thing with a Disney movie as a kid. It’s definitely not one of the better ones but have you ever seen Oliver and Company?
No, I haven’t.
Okay, so it features a cat and a dog and it’s a take on Oliver Twist. I swear I’m not making this up but the dog is played by Billy Joel and the whole soundtrack is basically his music and Huey Lewis and the News.
That’s so cool.
I can trace myself opening myself up to rock music because of that.
Hell yes.
Because you picked a Disney movie, were you the band member who lobbied for covering Tevin Campbell’s “I2I” from The Goofy Movie?
Actually, no. I've seen portions of The Goofy Movie, but I've never seen the whole thing. I think that song was something Rick was attached to and wanted to bring into the fold back in 2019 when we first played it. We just reprised it this past New Year's in Austin.
Formative song: Led Zeppelin, “What Is and What Should Never Be”
It might not be the consensus pick but I’ve always thought Led Zeppelin II is their best album.
I think it's my favorite one too.
Tell me about this song specifically.
I was getting into Led Zeppelin in middle school, and this was a major, major turning point for me. This was the first time in my life that I’d think, "Oh, I want to play guitar and I want to shred like Jimmy Page." Around this time, I’d go on these day trips with my dad. “Take Your Kid To Work” sorta deals. He’s a contractor, so we’d drive around to all those different construction jobs, and listen to classic rock radio. One day, we were driving and basically just the chorus of that song came on. It was one of those interlude-type songs where it's a station ID. They'd say the name of the radio station and then play that song.
I remember thinking, "Whoa, what is that song?" My dad didn't know what song it was either. This was the first song I remember really trying to track down. It took me a while because at first, I figured it was this other band Mountain. I also looked through Led Zeppelin's catalog but I couldn't find it. I was previewing the songs on iTunes and when I would queue it up, it wouldn't play the chorus but just the chill verse. I'd hear it and think, "Oh, that's not it." There was no Shazam in those days so it took me a second. Once I figured it out, I was like, "Oh holy shit: Led Zeppelin is the greatest band of all time." It led me down this rabbit hole for the first time.
I know previous generations had to go to the record store to find out what a song was but those iTunes 30-second snippets were so formative.
Yeah, you could get a lot out of just a 30-second preview.
What came after Zeppelin?
The Chili Peppers.
Okay!
Yeah, it was a big Zeppelin kick and then I got super deep into the Red Hot Chili Peppers. That was the first time I got so obsessive about a single band. I had all their albums. I knew everything by heart. I was really in it. At the time, they were just coming out with Stadium Arcadium. It was sick. They were just at the top again. I just thought that band was so cool and it was so cool to see that they were killing it even still after all those years. That was 20 years after they started the band too.
I definitely caught them doing the Stadium Arcadium tour when they hit the Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids in 2006. It’s funny because that’s where Anthony Kiedis is from.
Oh wow. That’s sick.
Only someone from Michigan could make something so Californian.
He just became that guy—that’s so wild. I didn't see them live until we played at ACL, and they were also playing that same day. I went to see them after we played
How’s the live show these days?
It was insane. Dude, the energy was crazy. Chad Smith is playing harder than ever. It's so impressive: their stamina is incredible.
Formative movie: Clue (1985)
This is a movie I haven’t seen in maybe 25 years but what I do remember is that it had three separate endings.
Yes, it does have three endings. At the time when they released the movie in theaters, you could go and they would just show one of the endings. So, you would have to go and see it multiple times in order to see all the endings, because it would play at different times.
That’s an impressive ticketing scam.
It’s so amazing. I found this movie randomly at the video store when I was younger, and then I just became obsessed with it. It was a movie I just continuously rented until my dog destroyed the package that it came in—the case for the video VHS. I brought it back and was so apologetic but the guy was like, "You know what, you just keep it." He gave me the tape and I was like, "Yes, let's go!" I didn't even think to buy it—we had just kept renting it.
What about the movie stuck with you?
I just love that movie. I can quote the whole thing. It's so funny to me. It's a little bit slapstick, but it's also kind of dry at times. There are funny puns and innuendos and Tim Curry is one of my favorite actors. He plays Wadsworth, the butler, and he's so crucial to the whole ending sequence of the movie. You have to see it again It's literally him taking everybody else in the movie and the viewer through how the killer could have done it. And he's running back and forth, talking super fast, and I still think it's just so high quality.
Do you have movies that you just rewatch all the time at this point in your life?
I recently made a personal top 20 movies of all time and I will share some of them with you. So yeah, Blues Brothers, School of Rock, and Clue are my top three. So School of Rock, I definitely will watch at least once a year. The same probably goes for Blues Brothers too. Then my list goes on to, Harry Potter, especially the first movie. And then, it's Life is Beautiful, Ratatouille, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Inglorious Basterds, Fever Pitch, and Field of Dreams. I love baseball. Those are my two favorite baseball movies.
I like it! So I was just in Denmark for a friend’s wedding and the first restaurant I stopped at in Aarhus was, strangely enough, Blues Brothers-themed. Though I was on a different continent, it was as if I had not left Chicago.
Sick. I need to go there.
Recent music: The indie pop bands Beatenberg, Ginger Root, and Parcels.
You chose three indie pop bands. Two, I already know, so let's start with the one I don't. Beatenberg. They're from Cape Town. I saw on your travel blog, Flying Monkey, that you recently visited there. Was discovering that band part of the trip?
I actually discovered them the year before at a festival outside of Amsterdam called Lowlands. It's a sick festival. It's 60,000 people. It sells out every year. It's like all Dutch folks. Not a lot of tourists go. People were like, “What are you guys doing here?” So it's really local. Literally everything on the website is in Dutch, so you'd have to translate in order to figure out anything about the festival. But we were traveling, and we're like, “Oh, this looks really fun. Let's try and go.”
It turns out, they had the best orientations of stages. They had two main stages for the big acts, one smaller one for house DJs, and another one for world music. Beatenberg played on that latter stage. We stumbled in on the last three songs but it was so clear that that band was incredible. I checked out their music and it’s been my favorite ever since. They've been my number-one artist on Spotify for the last two years. They're definitely a major obsession of mine now. They evoke that era of Paul Simon's Graceland and a little bit of Vampire Weekend too.
I was going to say, what I little I checked out of them before this interview, this dude’s voice definitely reminds me of Ezra’s. I liked what I heard.
Totally. They're originally from South Africa, from Cape Town, but now they live in the UK. They only play maybe two or three shows a year, so they're hard to catch live. They’re playing just London and Amsterdam this spring. I can't go, but I totally would.
I have yet to do the “fly out to Europe for a show” thing but it’s on the list.
There's nothing like it. [Goose members] Rick [Mitarotonda], Trevor [Weekz], and I flew out to see Fat Freddy's Drop back in 2018. We saw three different shows, one in Copenhagen, one in Stockholm, and one in Oslo. It was sick. We were traveling around for a whole week following the band and exploring the cities. So that was a really sick trip back in the day.
Amazing. What about Ginger Root? I really like his music.
I went to Montreal this past fall to see Ginger Root and Mildlife back-to-back nights. It was sick, both really influential shows for me. Ginger Root was really fun: just an absolute, bizarre, fun show with so many cool video elements. They literally had a guy just doing video the whole time on stage. He was moving around the whole time. He was basically part of the band. It was so cool. Really well done. I would highly recommend seeing him.
Speaking of Australian bands like Mildlife, what about Parcels?
Yeah, I love Parcels, too. I got into them a few years ago. My fiance, Becky, and I saw them play in Boston at a 500-capacity club called Royale. We got in early. There was no line, and we were front row. It was wild. We were lucky to catch them there because they blew up after.
They're one of those bands like Jungle where it's pretty undeniable pop music.
Their live show is not to be believed. I cannot believe how they're able to achieve what they do live. The harmonies are, like, stupid. They're so tight. Other bands I think use a lot of tracks. But here I don't hear any tracks. It just sounds really tight and they're just that good. As a musician who does that also that just makes them one of my favorite bands. It's like King Gizz, you see them and they're just a band and they're killing it.
Recent TV: Survivor
I’ve never watched this but so many people in my life have seen every episode. Survivor is kind of like a jam band: You’re either in it fully or it really doesn’t register for you.
It totally is. You're either obsessed or you're not. I'm definitely in the obsessed mode. That is definitely my favorite show, and I recently applied to go on. Who knows if I'll be able to or if they'll even call me back? I've been thinking about it for a long time. I gotta get on that show like that would be such a crazy time.
That would be nuts. How long is the filming obligation?
It's probably like a month. You're out there for 26 days now, and you probably have to go for a week in advance at least, and then probably a few days after. It's at least a month's commitment. You need to make sure you don't have anything else going on at that time, which for me is actually probably going to be the hardest part. If they were to call me back, I'd be like, “Well, you know, sorry, we actually have a tour.”
Get the booking agent on the horn. Postpone the album. It’s Survivor!
Man, I love that show. I love games. I think it's the ultimate game. The whole premise of the show is you go out with a whole bunch of people you don't know. It’s people from all walks of life. You're on tribes, and then, at various points in the game, you do challenges. If you lose the challenges, you have to vote people off on your tribe. So people are basically communicating together to be like, "Oh, I think we should vote him off, or I think we should vote her off." Then at the end of the game, when there are only three people left, the people who are voted out have to decide who wins. So you need to be able to vote somebody off, but then have them love you. It's a really interesting concept, and I love watching it.
I can see it now. The likable musician known for improvisation and collaboration wins it all. How are your survival skills?
I think I could do well. I did a 21-day solo hike on the John Muir Trail back in 2017.
Damn. How did that go?
It was sick, man. It was really cool. I met some lifelong friends, just randomly on the trail. I had to persevere through getting sick at one point, and then it snowed quite a bit. Just being out there in the wilderness alone is pretty wild. That changed my life for sure.
Recent activity: Traveling
You have a travel blog. You tour. You just went to Japan and got engaged. Tell me about your time there.
I just went to Japan. I have also just recently finished a massive blog write-up of the trip. It was so cool. It's such a special place. They have so many things dialed in about their society. The biggest thing I took away from it was how respectful they are to each other. I was so jealous of this beautiful society of people who don't talk too loud on their phones, finish all the things on their plates, and say please and thank you. They're so respectful. It seems to be ingrained in them. There are so many beautiful things about the culture that I really wish America could be a little more like this. I wish we could treat people with respect all the time. It's just the normal there. All the people felt very selfless, which I thought was really cool.
You haven’t even gotten to the food yet!
The food, bar none, was the best food I ever had. Everything was so good. Even the 7-Elevens were unbelievable like, "How is this so good?" There was such an intention to the craft of everything that it was palpable. Even the garbage trucks were clean and polished. You could tell the garbage truck driver probably cleans his truck. They care about the things that they use, and they care about what they're doing. It made a real impression on me.
Even in Denmark, I noticed the cleanliness and intention but also this culture of trust. You'll walk and get a nice espresso from one of the cool third-wave coffee shops, and there will be strollers with babies inside them, just outside the cafe.
Oh yeah, they trust you to not steal a baby. That is wild.
At crosswalks, even if no cars are coming, no one jaywalks. They all wait for the green light.
All the time. They're following the rules. Yeah, it's working out better for everyone. Good for them to realize that what's good for the good of everyone is good.
What I listened to:
The No Expectations 096 Playlist: Apple Music // Spotify // Tidal
1. Hannah Cohen, “Earthstar”
2. Kate Teague, “Get By”
3. Frog, “MIXTAPE LINER NOTES VAR. VII”
4. Lily Seabird, “Trash Mountain (1pm)”
5. Wilder Adkins, Erin Rae, “Said The Swallow To The Jay”
6. Brown Horse, “Corduroy Couch”
7. Renny Conti, “Formspring”
8. Discus, “Alignment, Misattributions”
9. rugh, “For Steven”
10. Dialup Ghost, “Hannah, I ♥️ U”
11. quickly, quickly, “Enything”
12. Mt. Misery, “Waking Up”
13. Rich Ruth, Lockeland Strings - “Blue Shell”
14. Ale Hop, Titi Bakorta, “Mapambazuko”
15. Goose, “Give It Time”
Open Head, What Is Success
On Open Head’s masterful What Is Success, there are guitars that sound like drums and drums that sound like guitars. The kinetic and adventurous post-punk of the Kingston, New York quartet is some of the most inventive heavy music I’ve heard in a long time. There’s palpable danger and edge in these songs that somehow never lose their tunefulness. Equal parts alienating and hypnotizing, to compare it to bands I love like Meat Wave and Squid feels insufficient. Just an exhilarating and pummeling listen front to back.
Ale Hop, Titi Bakorta, Mapambazuko
The Kampala, Uganda-based record label Nyege Nyege Tapes has consistently released some of the most thrilling and beguiling music that I always return to when I get sick of indie rock. Its electronic, danceable, and experimental catalog fuses genres and borders with equal ebullience. Mapambazuko is the product of Peruvian electronic musician Alejandra Cárdenas (Ale Hop) and Congolese guitarist Titi Bakorta collaborating for a blitzing and unpredictable collection of instrumental tunes that seamlessly blends these musicians' sensibilities. Its six originals are indispensable doses of mesmerizing rhythms and electronic flourishes—the three remixes aren't as exciting but your mileage may vary.
Rose City Band. Sol Y Sombra
Buttery lead guitars, ample twang, and easygoing vocals make for something that’s undeniably my shit. Oregon’s Rose City Band have excelled at stretching the bounds of Dead-indebted guitar rock and West Coast breeziness for the past half-decade. Founded by Wooden Shjips/Moon Duo guitarist/vocalist Ripley Johnson in 2019, the group has put out five summery and cosmic LPs via Chicago label Thrill Jockey. While each is excellent, the just-released Sol Y Sombra might be the most inviting of the bunch. From the pastoral bliss of “Radio Song,” the masterful transition between “Seeds of Light” and “La Mesa,” and the Jerry Garcia-covering-Lou Reed-evoking “Wheels,” there’s so much heady goodness to dig into here.
What I watched:
The Brutalist
From the first scene of Brady Corbet’s sprawling immigrant story The Brutalist, I knew I’d be watching a film that was 100% in my wheelhouse. In that opening, László Tóth, a fictional Hungarian-born Jewish architect played by Adrien Brody, is disembarking a boat on Ellis Island. The scene is dark, chaotic, and disorienting. He jostles his way out amidst hundreds of immigrants until he finds the sunlight and the Statue of Liberty appearing overhead (at a fascinating angle). It’s not exactly subtle but it’s provocative and tells you to emotionally prepare for a three-hour-plus deconstruction of the American Dream. While some of my friends were not thrilled with the epilogue, I thought the whole thing was brilliant.
What I read:
Jonathan Blitzer, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here
Jonathan Blitzer (no relation to Wolf) is a staff writer for the New Yorker who doggedly traces the origins, human stories, and government actors in the migrant crisis in Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis. It’s an unrelenting and uncompromising look at the disastrous effects of Cold War U.S. foreign policy in the region (it’s mostly our fault, it turns out) and the people these policy decisions have affected most over the past several decades. The story of Juan Ramagoza, an El Salvadoran doctor, is especially gut-wrenching, and Blitzer’s detailed look at the inner workings of our country’s devolving immigration policy is lucid and infuriating. As neighborhoods in my city become ghost towns due to a climate of fear and aggressive government actions against its most vulnerable communities, I’m glad I read it now.
The Weekly Chicago Show Calendar:
The gig calendar lives on the WTTW News website now. You can also subscribe to the newsletter I produce there called Daily Chicagoan to get it in your inbox every Wednesday.
Wow, the Beatenberg shoutout here really made me smile! Such an underrated band — for those looking for a primer, I covered them back in an old Hear Hear: https://hearhear.substack.com/p/the-best-band-youve-never-heard-of
I'm about 2 months late, but really enjoyed this interview! If you're ever in touch with Peter again, perhaps you can let him know that 'Why Should I Worry?' from the Oliver & Company soundtrack would be a sick Goose cover! Such a bop.