A mature debut from Orange County indie-rockers Greer. Watch and listen as chaos slowly cedes to order…
Release Date: 21st March 2025
Label: Epitaph Records
Formats: Digital
RECONVENED, REFRESHED
Orange County indie-rockers Greer have been steadily building up to this. They’ve been together for around four years in all and have a couple EPs (included Happy People, reviewed in these pages back in 2021) under their collective belt but, around three years ago, it seemed that Greer had burnt themselves out – so they did the sensible thing and took a break.
Then, in 2023, the members of Greer – Josiah (guitar and lead vocals), Corbin Jacques (guitar), Seth Thomson (bass) and Lucas Orvalle (drums) – reconvened, refreshed, in drummer Orvalle’s garage and ramped up the productivity. Such was the band’s output that, by the time they gathered together under the stewardship of Producer Rob Schnapf to start recording Big Smile, they had over 200 songs in their arsenal.
FROM OUT-AND-OUT CHAOS TO MELODIC ORDER
So, in the band’s own words: “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.”
Big Smile is a unique album, and it’s very definitely a piece of work that needs to be heard as a single, continuous entity. Because, that’s the only way that the listener will pick up on and understand the journey that the music takes from out-and-out chaos to gentle, melodic order over the course of the album’s thirteen tracks. Halfway through listening, I had given up on trying to predict what might be coming next but, by the time the full-time whistle had blown, it all made perfect sense.
FOLLOW THAT – IF YOU CAN…
The opening chaos comes as quite a shock. Opening track, Omnibus, is described as: “…a vacuum of noise, the overbearing weight of loss and a struggle to find purpose” and that’s an accurate summary of the song’s opening bars. But, even as the dust settles, order starts to emerge in the form of a driving, punky pop song that bursts with life. The guitars are fuzzy and the drums drive and the listener is left to wonder: “What was that? And how do they follow it?”
But follow it they do, and strains of pastoral whimsy manage to creep into the next track, One in the Same. Granted, that’s only half the story as the song also has a joyful, poppy, phase, albeit one that dominated by guitars set to ‘overload!’
THE METAMORPHOSIS CONTINUES…
And so does the metamorphosis continue. Had Enough is forceful and punchy with chugging guitars and bass and drums locked tightly together and With Might of Worms is a short, fast-paced instrumental piece that sits just to the poppier side of grunge. Greer move into familiar power pop territory for Miracle Fighting Red Barron and Josiah’s part-spoken, part-sung vocals seem to channel Lou Reed, before the halfway point of the chaos-order transformation is reached with Franken, one of the album’s standout tracks. It all starts so quietly, too, as a single guitar and a spacy synth provide the accompaniment to Josiah’s world-weary vocal. Then… the eruption, as the band kicks-in with a glorious, full-force sound.
There’s a touch of psychedelia to the gentle 1994 – that is, until the surging, punky guitars take over – but it’s easy to sense that the progression towards melodicism is now well advanced and that thought is consolidated by Test Virgin Opposites, another album highlight and, arguably the centrepiece of the whole thing. Josiah has reassumed his world-weary persona and his voice has an air of certainty and inevitability about it as he delivers his lyrics to a slow, solid rhythm and a backing that’s awash with swirling guitars.
Although we’ve been moving inextricably away from cacophony, punk and grunge, the acoustic guitars and cello of Demolition still come as a surprise. The guitars are discordant and the effect is thoroughly intriguing.
IS THAT PAUL McCARTNEY?
And then, suddenly, the transformation is complete and it almost seems as though Paul McCartney has found his way into the studio for She Knows, a stately piano ballad. Josiah has shed his weary resignation and has adopted the voice of a choirboy and everything that has passed so far falls into place. And there’s a Beatle feel, too, with Mugwump, the album’s penultimate track – although, this time, the influence seems to be more Harrison than McCartney. Indeed, even the guitar has developed a sitar tone for parts of this anthemic ballad.
The journey from chaos to order is completed with Audio 77, the album’s tuneful, acoustic, closing track. Josiah’s voice is sweet and intimate, the guitars are lazily strummed and the listener is left to contemplate a mission successfully accomplished.
Watch the official video to Had Enough, a track from the album, below:
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