Acclaimed U.K.-based band Bear’s Den is set to release their fourth studio album, Blue Hours, on May 13 via Communion Records. Band members Andrew Davie and Kevin Jones once again team up with producer Ian Grimble on what is one of their most personal records to date. Pre-order Blue Hours HERE.
In conjunction, the band premieres their electronic-driven track “Spiders,” today, which follows the release of last year’s single, “All That You Are.” Listen to/share “Spiders” HERE.
“I started writing ‘Spiders’ around the time we left London. In my head, I thought moving would solve lots of problems, like everything will be better—almost like this Neverland vibe,” Davie laughs. “‘Spiders’ is a song dealing with the fact that this absolutely wasn’t the case. I had this vision in my head that I’d be at one with nature, that I’d be calmer – but all the things that were rattling around in my brain before were still there after the move. The song is about the fact you can’t run away from the things that are bothering you.”
“While making the record we wanted to get across a kind of simmering intensity with the song and the idea of someone trying to keep their shit together while wrestling with these darker thoughts and feelings,” furthers Davie. “We wanted to get across a sense of bravery and triumph in saying, ‘sometimes I can’t pull myself out’ of these difficult situations. To celebrate the difficult moments because we all have them. They are a universally shared experience even if it feels sometimes like they’re not and you’re the only one who feels them.”Themes on the album include both self-reflection and mental health after both struggled with the latter in recent years. “It’s the main over-arching theme with this record,” Davie explains. “It probably speaks to our struggles and hopefully many other people’s too. Men are not very good at talking. We’re not really taught how to – men have no idea how to talk about this stuff, certainly to each other.”
Despite the album’s challenging themes, it’s an album drenched in hope too. “We wanted this to be a celebration of music,” Jones continues. “I think that informed some of the bolder decision making on this record. At a time when music was so distant, it felt important to make an album that sounded hopeful, celebratory, ambitious and beautiful in spite of the heavy subject matter in some of the songs.” Jones adds: “It was almost like we needed to shout louder than before because we felt that there were more barriers between the audience and us. We needed something to transcend that.”
