There’s a tangle of issues coursing through Evan Greer’s new album — genocide, transphobia, the rise of fascism — but no thesis statement sums up her artist-activist ethos quite like a refrain from “Problem.”
“Why am I like this? / I was born giving a fuck,” she rallies on the single, slapping a big, spiky bow on AMAB/ACAB, her first LP since 2019’s She/her/they/them. For those unfamiliar with Greer’s work, the title — short for “assigned male at birth; all cops are bastards” — is a bit of a tell. From rallying against surveillance capitalism, to condemning violence against Palestinians, Greer has never shied away from trumpeting some of today’s most pressing issues.
With AMAB/ACAB, she’s not shying away from the complicated feelings that come with tackling those issues, either. Greer’s latest work is a practice in radical honesty, revealing the often-unspoken weight that comes with inking razor-sharp rallying cries (and putting them to work).
“I think I’m showing myself more honestly on this record,” she tells Vanyaland. “It’s less of a call to action or a set of marching orders and more of an admission. I feel like I’m saying, ‘guys, I’m scared too, I don’t totally know what to do, but I love you and I believe we’ll make it out of this mess together.'”
For all of its punk grit, expressed through songs like “Pinkwashing” and “Protect Trans Kids (WTFIWWY),” AMAB/ACAB also carries a vulnerable sense of frustration and exhaustion. The song “Bunker,” for instance, is an “are-we-or-aren’t-we-together” tale told through the lens of planning who you’ll be bunker buddies with in the near future. “Problem,” a collaboration with Rusted Root’s Liz Berlin, expresses a wish to “disappear, or at least disassociate” in the face of sociopolitical issues that feel insurmountable.
“For me, looking back at the last 20-plus years of activism, making music, and playing about a zillion basement shows and protests and benefit concerts in bookstores helps keep me grounded in what the work needs to be for the next 20 years,” Greer says. “But yeah, I’m tired, y’all. And I know everyone else is too.”
After recording her last project, Spotify Is Surveillance, in her bedroom during the COVID-19 pandemic, Greer says she felt empowered to tinker with music at home. As a result, much of AMAB/ACAB started as Garageband projects in her basement studio. The album began to come together around 2022, when Joe Biden was still in office. By the time AMAB/ACAB was ready for release, Donald Trump has been re-elected, and Greer wondered if the material “would still feel relevant or urgent enough.”
“The fact that they do perhaps speaks to the reality that the systems of oppression we sing about on the record are present and crushing regardless of who sits in the White House,” she says. “The things we’re grappling with — like how we hold our relationships together as the world falls apart, and how we channel our outrage into actually effective resistance — were in the air then, and they’re in the air now.”
But Greer isn’t alone in her fight. AMAB/ACAB‘s assortment of guest artists ranges from Eve 6, to Downtown Boys frontperson Victoria Ruiz, to Fenway Park organist Josh Kantor. “Protect Trans Kids (WTFIWWY),” which we lauded as one of the best songs of 2025 so far, incorporates the passion of fellow trans artist Ryan Cassata. No single collaborator chips in with “the answer” to the world’s problems — and Greer warns that politicians and organizations who claim to have the solution are “mostly grifters or naive zealots” — but that’s almost besides the point.
The point is building, confiding in, and restoring your community so you can push onwards.
“I think there’s some maturity in just saying ‘I don’t know what to do,'” Greer concludes. “‘Let’s figure it out together.'”
Tune in below.