A universal music fact for the ages: sometimes a good song just needs to meet the right moment somewhere down the line to reach its potential greatness. When Jett Wolfe, guitarist of Daytona Beach rock powerhouse Greye, wrote and sang “Everything” for the ever-evolving Daytona Beach band’s second album The Worrier in 2016, he could scarcely imagine not only a pandemic in the offing, but a sociopolitical Zeitgeist around it that would make the song’s dueling themes of bright optimism and crippling fears and doubts so meaningful and essential for people to hear in 2022.
Although Greye had played “Everything” a few times over the course of hundreds of shows over the past six years, it’s easy to see why it was pretty much overlooked for so long. Sonically, melodically, rhythmically and performance wise, the edgy, hard driving five-piece group is rocking out in a way that’s light years from the easier going vibe and energy they were putting out in the mid-2010s.
It’s also easy for an early album track to be shuffled aside when they’ve been on this crazy-cool roll of four consecutive international #1 hits (on the Euro Indie Chart and World Indie Music Chart) over the past year – including “So Far So Good,” “Growing Pains,” “I Don’t Mind” and their most recent, “Over My Head.” Those tracks will be on their upcoming full-length album also titled So Far So Good. Previously, their first 2020 track “Lucky” hit #1 on the World Indie chart and #2 on the Euro chart while racking up over 1.2 million views for its video. “I Don’t Mind” also landed quickly at #2 on Spotify’s Global Radio Chart Toppers playlist.
Greye have had over seven years in the indie spotlight to get good at making frills-free rock n’ roll, but just from analyzing the finer points of So Far So Good, I think it can be said that they’re one of the leaders in their scene – and perhaps all of the southeastern rock circuit in general right now. Florida’s underground is booming in ways I don’t think a lot of critics saw coming at the start of 2021, and while there hasn’t been nearly as much discussion about the rockers coming out of the state, that could very well change if Greye successfully get So Far So Good to the AOR market it was made to satisfy.
