The best way I can describe the music of Bear’s Den is that it’s like something I’ve known forever, like an old friend, but there is also something magically unique and intriguing about it. Since releasing their debut album, ‘Islands’ a decade ago in October 2014, Bear’s Den have released, five studio albums and a staggering seven EPs.
At the core of the band are Andrew Davie and Kevin Jones. In celebration of the 10th anniversary of ‘Islands’, the guys have just released a special edition available in several exclusive formats. Digitally released alongside this milestone offering is a stunning reworked version of the fan-favourite track ‘Above the Clouds of Pompeii.’ It was nominated for the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song musically and lyrically in 2015.
They have also announced a string of live shows in stunning concert halls across Europe, set to start in March 2025 and including a night at London’s Royal Albert Hall on March 13th 2025.
Now married, with two young kids, Andrew Davie spoke to CLASH, literally just returning from The Netherlands following a special re-listen event of the album with fans in Europe.
—
—
I remember there were a lot of things going on in my life at the time when I first heard ‘Islands’, so it’s still a special, special album for me. Let’s start with Dermot Kennedy on that new version of ‘Above the Clouds of Pompeii’. How did that come about, who asked who, how did it happen?
AD: Well, we definitely asked Dermot. I remember ages and ages ago, Dermot was on Annie Mac’s show on Radio 1. A few friends of mine sent me this link to the interview, and he was really, really lovely about ‘Pompeii’. I remember just thinking, it’s one of those moments, it was just really touching. At the time, things were bubbling, but we weren’t really doing big shows yet or anything like that. For someone like Dermot to have noticed our song was a really big deal. But, we were a bit too shy to reach out. We didn’t strike up communication properly there and then. When we were thinking of doing a 10-year anniversary, I just, we remembered that moment. In the spirit of, “fuck it”, let’s just ask the question. You never know.
Over the last couple of years, both Kev and I have been saying yes to a few things within the band and also outside of the band in terms of opportunities to work with or do some writing with other people. Every time you do them, even if it doesn’t work straight away or whatever, you learn something. It’s a big honour to be asked to do anything and to be sort of trusted with anything. Dermot was ridiculously up for it, such a lovely guy. He came over to London for the day and we spent the day hanging out with our producer Ian [Grimble] and Christof [van der Ven], who plays with us as well. He was just a legend, on top of being a fantastic singer and songwriter, just a diamond of a bloke.
Why do you think that song in particular has really reached people and really touched people?
AD: I don’t fully know or understand it. Maybe that’s one of the great things about music – it’s really hard to fully understand why things connect in the way that they do. It’s a song about grief and coming to terms with grief. Grief is this very uniting thing actually, that we’ve all got, we’ll experience at some stage and most likely already have. When you’re writing these songs in incredibly vulnerable moments where you feel quite alone and then sharing them in a room with people and that is this uniting force. Grief, although it is such a difficult and sad thing, obviously, it is something we all go through. It’s one of those things, when I was writing it, I was trying to do justice to whatever moment you’re trying to talk about. There’s a universality to grief.
—
—
Ten years ago you were more of a three-piece then with Joey [Haynes] in the band? How have the dynamics changed over the years compared now with then?
AD: Yeah. I think it’s definitely a different world really when it comes to making music than it perhaps was ten years ago. I remember when we started out, we used to do a lot of rehearsals under these train arches in Putney. There was a rehearsal studio called RMS Studios, and we used to go there all the time. As you grow up and your lives away from the band grow as well, you end up perhaps working more, spending more time in studio environments and less time in rehearsal studio environments. It just changes slightly.
But, I think to some extent, the band dynamic has always been that I’ll get the ball rolling with chords and lyrics. And then once that’s done, it really is a bit of a kind of creative free for all. We all try things.
It’s funny listening to the record, all the different parts and obviously, Joey no longer being in the band. It’s really nostalgic, remembering going through takes with him, being in the studio with him and all the different amazing things we all did together.
You still in touch with Joey?
AD: Yeah, we don’t speak as much as I think either of us would like, but he came to my wedding last year. He’s still just such an important person for both of us. He’s a lovely dude. He’s really flourishing away from the band. He’s got his own solo project. The name of that project is his name – John Revelle. He’s got his fingers in all loads of different pies. He’s just one of these incredibly talented people who seems to be able to do anything really. I’m very envious.
You spoke with CLASH magazine back in 2014, just before the original release of ‘Islands’. How have you changed as a musician and as a songwriter since then, if any?
AD: Quite a lot, really. One of the things that really struck me about listening to the album again was when you’re young, you kind of just say things in a much more like explicit, bold way. When you’ve been a songwriter for a long time, there’s a tendency that you overthink your words or you overwrite songs. ‘Islands’ sounds like a much younger person experiencing really raw feelings for the first time.
What age were you then?
AD: I was writing those songs right up till we recorded them. I was about 24, 25 when we recorded it, I think. I probably started writing songs when I was about 16, so it’s about eight years of stuff. One of the things that strikes me about it the most is that sometimes I have to work much harder to write something as simple and raw as I perhaps just naturally did when I was younger. I feel like when I listen to it, I’m like, that guy’s really brave doing that. I think it’s just harder to do that now.
We mixed it at Abbey Road with Ian Grimble [producer] and Christian Wright, who masters the record. That was my first time being in there for like a mix and actually spending like a good chunk of time there. It’s an amazing place. There’s so much incredible history.
We remixed the album in this new format, spatial audio format [Dolby Atmos]. It’s like a remaster kind of thing, but it’s kind of further than that. Historically, I don’t really care how good this sounds, if only people who have amazing setups can hear it. But it’s actually got to a point now where a lot of cars now are going to have it set up and Apple are going to start using it on their streaming service.
Is it richer, warmer, denser?
AD: There’s more space for everything. I’m not technically gifted enough to talk about it in much detail [laughs], but when you’re bouncing everything down to just a stereo mix, you have to squash a lot of the sound and you lose a lot of detail in certain things. You can space things in really interesting ways.
Any advice to your younger 2014 self back then?
AD: Oh my gosh, I think, don’t be afraid of reaching out to people. I think when you’re in a band, when you start out in a band, it’s really important that you don’t open all the doors to other people’s opinions on your music, because otherwise it’ll just end up sounding like someone else’s, or you’ll get pulled in all these different directions and it’ll be confusing. But then the danger is that you sort of don’t open any doors and that you’re sort of locked in your own little world. I think it’s really important to find a good balance of those two things. When you’re a young band, you need to figure out who you are first before you start collaborating and doing these other things, or I thought you did. But actually, I’d probably say to my younger self, go easier on yourself and go ask the Dermot Kennedys of this world and share ideas a bit more perhaps.
—
—
The song, ‘Love We Stole’ – you mentioned the impact that producer Ian Grimble had on that track specifically. Are you still working with Ian?
AD: Yeah, Ian, he’s worked on pretty much every album we’ve done, apart from ‘So That You Might Hear Me’, he’s produced everything.
How would you sum up his impact on that song and I suppose on ‘Islands’ generally?
AD: He actually had a really long demo of the song ‘Love We Stole’. It was about seven minutes long, like a real prog rock odyssey with the first four minutes of just atmosphere and vibes. Heavy on vibes, low on detail.Ian was just like, “this song gets really good when that riff comes in. So, if you don’t mind, we’re going to start from that moment.” He managed to condense what was about four minutes worth of build up to about 20 seconds.
In truth, Ian really got what we were trying to do more than we did when we were younger. He’s made some amazing albums and he’s been in the room for some incredible records as well. He’s engineered and produced great records. We trust his ears, we trust his opinion on what we’re doing. He just took all the sort of ideas we were having and just kind of went, like, this is all good, but it just feels a bit like meandering. Let’s just be, you know, let’s get to the point. It was just trying to capture the rawness of the three of our relationship as musicians and as people. Just try and believe in yourself. Early on, you really have to, and it’s really hard to do it. Just be the most sort of you version of you that you can be. Then as you grow, you can evolve and try different things.
The Glastonbury experience with ‘Isaac’, tell me a little bit about that one.
AD: Yeah, so that was this magical moment. Gosh, it must have been 2015, maybe 2014.
We always sing the end of that song completely a cappella. It’s just sort of pulling things right down to their barest elements. And I think ‘Isaac’ is a really good song to do that on.
But the audience just kept going. It was one of the tents. And we were on at the same time as Lionel Richie [laughs]. We were like, brilliant. No one is going to be watching us. Somehow the tent was really full, and it was this bananas moment where we normally just finish the song and walk off. But people just kept going for like minutes. It was really just amazing. I didn’t know what to do. We were still getting really used to audiences getting what we were doing. You have these little magical moments where people seem to really get it.
—
—
‘Stubborn Beast’, where the title of the album comes from. There’s so many, so many words and possibilities on that album. Why was “Islands” picked out as a lyric of that song as the title?
AD: I think a big part of that record for me was that I always write songs when I’m feeling really isolated, really alone and I don’t know how to figure things out. The line in that song is about pushing away people closest to you when you’re trying to, figure things out or you’re trying to solve your problems. You should be really letting them into your life more to support you. That was something I was noticing when I was talking to a lot of my friends as well, just the sort of sense that everyone was a little bit isolated. Maybe it’s because we were all quite young and trying to figure ourselves out, but it felt like we had all these close relationships with people, but we were all sort of islands in a way. We were all on our own very, very individual journeys. That wasn’t just friends, that was family as well.
The line in that song is, “as you wander your islands, unborn and unloved, you set fire to the bridges that you were carried across.” We all get anywhere by working with other people and by being supportive of each other. That’s how we get anywhere and do anything. When we just land somewhere and forget that, that’s dangerous. It’s something that feels quite true to us as a band, as we’ve gone through everything. That’s something we kind of keep coming back to.
On ‘Magdalene’, obviously there’s a harrowing backstory to that one with The Magdelene Laundries , but something that I also picked up was about you were in a band with Kev called Cherbourg, which I didn’t know. What were they like as a band?
AD: There was one critic described us as a nightmarish barbershop quartet who sound like they smoke 40 a day [both laugh]. So I’ll let you just imagine how good that sounds. Well, you know what? The drummer for Cherbourg is now the drummer for Sting, so that’s pretty cool. Chris Maas is his name and he plays drums for Sting’s new touring format, Sting 3.0. Phil Renna is an incredible musician as well. He played in a band called Mt. Desolation for a while and now he’s helping Ben from Mumford & Sons with running venues and things like that.
There’s no Cherbourg songs that are going to appear on the live set anytime soon?
AD: Well, at the end of Magdalene, there is one Cherbourg song that we sing. It’s a song called ‘Never Love Again’. We’ve always liked that song. It was like a little nod to our past for Kev and I. We wanted to have a song in the background that sounded like it was on a gramophone. After hearing ‘Magdalene’, it felt like that that’s a song about someone losing their faith in religion, losing their faith in love, losing their faith in all of these things. ‘Never Love Again’ was really all about being in that place as well. It was all Ian [Grimble] being clever.
—
—
With ‘Elysium’ and ‘Agape’, we could probably talk for hours about those two songs alone. What springs to mind when you play those songs?
AD: When I think of Elysium, I think of a lot of stuff. It’s one of those songs that I would find really hard to write now. I’m really proud of it, but I would find it hard to replicate it. It’s a really literal song talking to my stepbrother about religion, life, all of that. There was quite a lot about religion in our early songs. It’s still there, but not as much. I studied Religion at school up until I was 18. I was never particularly religious, but I am fascinated by it. A lot of my close friends were very religious growing up, all different faiths. I was always interested in the idea of faith, because if you don’t have a direct one, it’s so interesting, so much history & heritage, so many ideas that you have to buy into and believe in. I just don’t have that ability to do that.
That song has been on such a journey. The music video for ‘Elysium’ was a very powerful moment for the band’s career. We’re still very close with a lot of the people involved in that. It was directed by an amazing filmmaker called Marcus Haney. Marcus heard the song and immediately wanted to go to his brother’s college and film his last days of college, his last days of innocence. So there was that really powerful connection between that song and that filmmaker, the horrific incident that happened at that university. A lot of those kids we are still very close to, and when we play in Seattle, we see them. It was at Seattle Pacific University, and while filming his brother & his friends, there was a school shooting, and Paul Lee, one of the friends in the group, was shot. Totally harrowing. We said, don’t worry, just stop filming. Two weeks later, he sent this film over to us. It was the journey of them hanging out, to hearing the news, going through their own grief process. We did a record in Seattle for about seven weeks, and Turner, Marcus’s little brother did some photos for us in the studio, and he has become a really close friend of ours.
Agape – Whenever we play that live, it’s the coolest thing ever, because I think people really connect to it in a magical way, and you never know fully why. Something about that song is more powerful than any other songs that we have ever written. I personally get a real buzz feeling a room really light up when we play the song. For most people, it’s the first song they have heard by us, and there’s a rawness to that; a rawness that’s hard to replicate now.
As a songwriter, as you get older, you can get technically better, I admire the bravery of youth when I wrote the likes of Agape, Elysium and Pompeii.
—
—
‘Sophie’ – not on the album officially, but it’s part of that journey of early songs that was on your first EP.
AD: Yeah, the demo of ‘Sophie’ is on the re-issue of ‘Islands’. For us, it’s definitely a song that feels from that world. We rented this big studio in Lincoln to record the EP. We wanted it to be a really massive sounding EP, so we went there to record all this stuff. But we also tried out this little idea in the corridor with me and Joey playing banjos together. It could have been a corridor anywhere. [laughs], so we had this massively impressive studio, and I think the song that had the most attention over the years has definitely been ‘Sophie’. I think that’s a real triumph of it’s not about the big studio and the fancy microphones, sometimes it’s just capturing a moment in a corridor.
It’s the repeating lyric of that song [Didn’t know that I’ve been running, I’ve been running my whole life…] that is really the moment in that song for me.
AD: Yeah, a lot of Bear’s Den songs are accidentally bigger than they should have been. It’s such a vulnerable little song, and the ending is really sad. It’s magical how that can feel like the most empowering thing. We’re all running away and figuring things out, and one day, you are going to have to face up to some of the stuff that you’re running from, but it’s important to not push people away while you’re doing it.
Anything else that the album means to you personally?
AD: I was talking to a friend recently about that it was the ten-year anniversary of ‘Islands’. They just said, “that’s the dream – you are celebrating ten years of an album”. It was a real reminder that we’re always thinking about the next album or the next tour, we’re very lucky that we’ve made something that has lasted that long and still has an impression on anyone, is incredible to us. When we started out we thought, that’s great to make an album, we probably won’t get to make another one. We’ve done all kinds of interesting stuff that I never thought we’d get a chance to do. Everyone has just worked really hard and been incredibly creative to give us an opportunity to be a band that can connect with people. A lot of gratitude is where I’m currently at.
—
Join us on WeAre8, as we get under the skin of global cultural happenings. Follow Clash Magazine HERE as we skip merrily between clubs, concerts, interviews and photo shoots. Get backstage sneak-peeks and a view into our world as the fun and games unfold.
A Quick Look Back: Bear’s Den Interviewed – clashmusic.com
RELATED ARTICLES