A CONVERSATION WITH... BEARS IN TREES
Nearly four years later, Bears in Trees invited us in for a chat again. But instead of over Zoom, it was their tour bus during their biggest tour yet.
Photo Credit: @Chazzadnitt
If your algorithms are tuned into ‘indie music’ at any fame level, you might have seen a Bears in Trees video pop up. They’re four English individuals with different styles, haircuts, and demeanours who have come into their own over the last four years. We combined questions from fans and our writers to bring you this lovely, if not chaotic, interview. Check out the highlights from the interview or the full video below!
Chorus: “And we’re Bears in Trees!”
Nick: You can’t even tell we rehearsed that like 10 times before you got here. Professionals, professionals.
Square One: I couldn’t even tell. So when did you fall in love with music?
Iain: I always really liked music, but my parents and older sisters were always really into it. I think I fell in love with it completely when I got Guitar Hero on DS and I got introduced to Fall Out Boy, Paramore and that entire scene.
Nick: I’m still waiting. Kidding! I got this kid’s karaoke machine when I was like five and you could put cassettes in it. And I got a Bob the Builder cassette that I used to sing along to a lot, you know, Bob the Builder covers.
Callum: Busted’s A Present for Everyone — I got that at Christmas and that was it!
George: I used to sit on the kitchen floor with saucepans all around me and just hit them. A very young age. That was really the start of it for me.
(There was an interlude of a Bob the Builder cover, seen here.)
Square One: How would you describe each other?
George: We’re a band of two halves. You have the business side of me and Callum and the creative side with Nick and Iain.
Callum: We’re like a mullet! Party in the front, business in the back.
Iain: We’ve got different likes and dislikes but we’re all joined together by our love of making music together. Nick is a total English student, in the best way. He can culturally analyse anime and stuff like that and just always go deep on stuff that not many people would. Callum is a classically trained flautist. So you mix those talents with the ability to make brilliant pop music and a ray of sunshine and you get Callum. George, to me, is the epitome of being in love with sound. He loves doing crew stuff because the construction of sound and that side of things is something that draws him in.
George: Now describing Iain, we’d say he’s chaos and unpredictable. He’s the wild card, like we won’t know if he’s being sarcastic or not but the ideas that come out of his mouth are just wonderful and so off the wall.
Square One: If you only had time to listen to one song before humanity ended, what song would from your discography would it be?
Iain: If it wasn’t our discography, I was about to hit you with ‘American Pie’ by Don McLean. Wish I wrote that one.
George: ‘Don’t Wanna Be Angry’ and it’s the last song on our latest album, How to Build an Ocean: Instructions. At the very end there’s an incredible guitar solo and then I just… scream. Which would happen at the end of the world.
Iain: I’m gonna challenge that and put forward ‘Henry Says’, also on the latest album, because for me, it’s a summery, boppy song. It has a nice fade-out at the end and feels like walking into oblivion with a smile on your face.
Nick: I’m gonna pick the first song we ever wrote as a band ‘Less Than Hello’ which isn’t even on YouTube anymore. But it’s just because of the memories, it’d be nice listening to that.
Callum: What’s the longest? But actually, I’d say ‘Injured Crow’ from the new album. It’s just moments passing into the afterlife.
Square One: What was your favourite part of creating How to Build an Ocean: Instructions?
Nick: George and I had to herd a sheep on the second day. There’s video footage! We were near fields with farmer’s sheep next to our accommodation. One of the sheep had escaped and it was banging on the wall trying to get in. We were like ‘This is terrifying, the sheep’s gonna eat us’.
Callum: It was a rapid-looking sheep. Sheep are quite scary.
George: We did wanna record them and get them baa-ing into the album but we didn’t do that.
Iain: Our producer, GP, an amazing guy and creative engineer, had the role of getting us out of the way of ourselves and allowing each part to become iconic and shine. IT allowed us to experiment in ways that we knew we could. There was room to make mistakes because he’d tell you if something was bad, but there was room to do what you wanted. Like there’s this one drum fill in ‘Henry Says’ in which GP kept going to George and told him to do it again, but crazier. Crazier until it was barely even a solo, it was just amazing. It was really like who cares? Experiment! Do something really weird and we can reach the edge and bring it back slightly. There are these crazy auto-tune sections, these solos, these drum fills that are amazing in this album. Normally it’s the writing that’s my favourite but this time it was the recording.
Square One: What’s been a moment of joy for you so far in your music-making adventures?
Nick: Putting trumpets on our most recent album. Trumpet Joe, who’s on the trumpets, he’s such a legend. In one day he smashed all his parts out. You know it’s not an album until the trumpets come on. The trumpets really bring it all together so beautifully.
George: Towards the end of the two weeks we spent recording the album, we got to the point where all the songs we were working on for so long suddenly became something that we could never dream of. It was taking it to a whole new level. Listening to them all back it was like, they’re not that scrappy demo anymore. They’re this incredible thing and it was really just a very sudden realisation.
Iain: One of the first tours after lockdown. Before that, we were playing small shows to mainly friends and then a few people who have found us. It was those first couple of tours where we were selling like 600 cap rooms in London and you could see a sea of people who had really resonated with what we’d done. Normally when we were playing shows before that, you’d have a decent amount of the audience who didn’t know who you were and you had to convince. And this time it was only people who really resonated with the music. I felt so safe and joyous to be in that space with my three best friends, just making music in that room.
Callum: On this tour specifically, it’s been really fun with the crew hearing the new album. Like we’ve been playing it at soundchecks and rehearsals and then they’d be like ‘I wanna hear this one today’ or ‘this one’ — it’s very sweet.