GREER UNLEASHES ON DEBUT ALBUM ‘BIG SMILE’
“As 2025 unfolds, it’s clear that this will be a defining year for Greer,” declares Earmilk as the band reemerges from the heart of SoCal’s indie rock scene fresh off a three-year hiatus with their debut album, Big Smile, out now via Epitaph. With an unrelenting emotional push and pull, tinges of 90s garage rock nostalgia and lyrics that cut deeply, the album is a full-throttle return — one that’s been well worth the wait. Listen to it in full below.
‘Big Smile’
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“In a way, we always say this record has been six years in the making,” they reflect. After a few years of being a band, signing to Epitaph and releasing two buzzy EPs (Lullaby For You and Happy People), the young SoCal foursome behind Greer was feeling burnt and disconnected from the songs they’d written and toured. While 2021 came and went, a pandemic-induced fatigue led to their decision to go on an indefinite hiatus while finding individual clarity. Greer had to grow up again.
Returning to drummer Lucas’s Orange County garage where it all started, the band began to unearth old drafts and alchemize their matured, fully realized sound, eventually entering the studio with Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, The Vines, Beck) with over two hundred songs written. The thirteen tracks that make up the album are the band’s emotional champions that track the tumultuous period between the start of their break and the peace they found on their way back. “‘Omnibus,’ the album’s opener, presents confusion in a vacuum of noise,” the band explains, “the overbearing weight of loss and struggling to find purpose, which slowly tames and realizes itself progressing through the track list; while ‘audio_77’ is the gossamer, an acoustic closer that reveals a placid beauty and quiet realization, concluding a long and chaotic haze with tender rest.” Laced between are vignettes of raw intensity, releasing the somber energy retained from Greer’s individual experiences while unveiling a complex new texture to their sound and reclaiming their narrative in the process.
Leading into the record’s release, the members of Greer – Josiah (vocals, guitar), Corbin (guitar, vocals), Seth (bass guitar), and Lucas (drums) – participated in a 36-hour livestream as part of their Greer On Display x Heaven by Marc Jacobs exhibition. Enclosed together in a 7’x7’ space and displayed in the gallery’s window on Fairfax in Los Angeles for that time while committing to limited technology usage and radical transparency, fans had the chance to follow every moment of Greer’s experiment, capped by a raucous DIY performance in the space.
The band also recently announced their month-long North American headlining tour kicking off in Phoenix, AZ on May 30 and wrapping up in Santa Ana, CA on June 30. “Despite the amount of time that has transpired since our last release, we as a band feel solid as a rock,” says Greer. “We’re nervous for our old fans to hear how our sound has changed, but that nervousness quickly overlaps with the excitement we feel in listening to the songs. We are so excited to get back on stage and sing our hearts out.” All dates are listed below, and tickets can be purchased here.