With their highly-anticipated new album ‘Blue Hours’ set for release on May 13th via Communion Records, folk-rock duo Bear’s Den – made up of Andrew Davie and Kevin Jones – have now unveiled the captivating new video for one of the record’s standout offerings, ‘Spiders’.
Created by accomplished animator Mawrgan Shaw, the new visuals for ‘Spiders’ perfectly accompany the original song’s lovelorn and heartfelt direction. Written during the time when the duo chose to leave London in search of a calmer and more peaceful life, the video highlights the dark and impersonal thoughts that follow you wherever you go but still elevates the feeling of hope that encourages us all to keep going and moving forward. Watch BELOW:
Speaking about the new video, Mawrgan said, “Working with Bear’s Den has been a wonderful experience and to be trusted to create a visual story for Spiders was an honour.” Adding, “The music video for Spiders is entirely hand-drawn and features over 2,000 individual drawings.”
The pair has also today launched a new season of their Bear’s Den podcast, which will see the duo exploring the themes around their new album. It is available to stream here.
Produced by regular collaborator Ian Grimble, themes on the new album ‘Blue Hours’ include both self-reflection and mental health after both struggled with the latter in recent years. “It’s the main overarching theme with this record,” Davie explains. The group, who has worked with mental health charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) previously added: “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.”
Adding about the new album, Davie says: “Blue Hours is a kind of imaginary space you get into at night, a place where you process difficult things or where you try to figure everything out.”
The pair describe the conceptual blue hours headspace that gives the new album its title as being “somewhere between a hotel, a mental health hospital, a bar that stays open later than anywhere else, a paradise, a dream, a nightmare and an endless sea of corridors and staircases leading you to rooms that represent memories – good, bad, happy or difficult.”
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.”
The album will be available on an exclusive signed colour vinyl (transparent blue) format from the group’s website, as well as a D2C special format personalised vinyl – a strictly limited 500 pressings of a handmade and numbered white label pressings.
It will also be available on an independent record store exclusive coloured vinyl, as well as standard vinyl, CD and cassette.
The group has also recently announced details of a full UK, Europe and North America 2022 tour, with tickets available to purchase now from https://www.bearsdenmusic.co.uk/live – including a newly added second date at Brussels Ancienne Belgique on May 10th.
The full list of dates are:
23rd April – Oslo – Parkteatret
24th April – Stockholm – Debaser
26th April – Copenhagen – Studie 2
28th April – Berlin – Astra
29th April – Hamburg – Fabrik
1st May – Amsterdam – Paradiso
2nd May – Amsterdam – Paradiso
5th May – Zurich – Kaufleuten
7th May – Cologne – Carlswerk Victoria
9th May – Brussels – Ancienne Belgique *Last tickets
10th May – Brussels – Ancienne Belgique **extra date
17th May – Bristol – O2 Academy
18th May – London – Eventim Apollo
21st May – Dublin – Olympia
22nd May – Manchester – Albert Hall
23rd May – Glasgow – O2 Academy
25th May – Newcastle – Newcastle University
26th May – Birmingham – O2 Institute
27th May – Leeds – Leeds University Stylus
8th Sept – Dallas, TX – The Studio at The Factory
9th Sept – Austin, TX – Emo’s
11th Sep – Nashville, TN – The Basement East
12th Sept – Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse
14th Sept – Ardmore, PA – Ardmore Music Hall
15th Sept – New York, NY – Webster Hall
16th Sept – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
17th Sept – Boston, MA – Royale
20th Sept – Toronto, ON – Danforth Music Hall
21st Sept – Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall
23rd Sept – Minneapolis, MN – Varsity Theater
24th Sept – Iowa City, IA – The Englert Theatre
25th Sept – Kansas City, MO – Knuckleheads Saloon
27th Sep – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater
28th Sept – Salt Lake City, UT – The CommonWealth Room
30th Sept – Seattle, WA – Neptune Theatre
1st Oct – Vancouver, BC – Vogue Theatre
3rd Oct – Portland, OR – Revolution Hall
5th Oct – Felton, CA – Felton Music Hall
6th Oct – San Francisco, CA – August Hall
8th Oct – West Hollywood, CA – Troubadour
The full album tracklist is:
New Ways
Blue Hours
Frightened Whispers
Gratitude
Shadows
All That You Are
Spiders
Selective Memories
On Your Side
All The Wrong Place
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