Greer

As 2025 unfolds, it’s clear that this will be a defining year for Greer,” declare 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.

To celebrate the news, album focus track 'Mugwump' is out now on all good streaming services. 

“In a way, we always say this record has been six years in the making,” the band reflects. 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, present 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.

Greer's debut album Big Smile is out now via Epitaph Records

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It took us a while to get to Big Smile, Greer’s long-awaited debut album. After four years and two EPs, the foursome behind Greer was feeling burnt and disconnected from the songs they’d written and toured. They went their separate ways for more than a year, retreating to their Southern California homes to decompress.

When they reconvened in 2023, they went back to where it all started: drummer Lucas Ovalle’s garage. It was in this familiar environment that Ovalle, guitarist lead singer Josiah, guitarist Corbin Jacques, and bassist Seth Thomson learned how to be friends again and shared all the anxieties and revelations they’d endured on hiatus through crafting songs.  

Those garage sessions turned out to be wildly productive. Between writing new songs, unearthing old drafts, and demoing them all, they entered the recording studio with over 200 songs written. The 13 that make up Big Smile 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 to each other. In the studio with fellow California legends Rob Schnapf (The Vines, Beck) and Matt Schuessler (Kurt Vile, Cat Power), Greer grew up again, taking more ownership over their sound and learning to speak producer-ese.

As steep as the learning curve was, it’s that hard work that gives Big Smile its balance of brilliance and vulnerability. “Omnibus” the album’s opener, presents confusion in a vacuum of noise, 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, acoustic closer that reveals a placid beauty and quiet realization, concluding a long and chaotic haze. Every song in between is full of realizations that lead to the unburdened, uplifting “Audio 77.” 

Big Smile is the sound of a band exorcising their demons, learning to trust themselves, and asserting themselves with newfound earnestness and maturity. It’s the sound of a band that’s fallen in love with rocking out again. It’s the sound of friends rediscovering each other and the magic that they can create together when they embrace each other’s vulnerable side. With Big Smile, Greer has arrived as a serious, and seriously fun, alt rock band with diversity of sound and unity of vision.