Croydon’s favourite dirtbag boyband Bears in Trees today share heart-pinching ‘We Don’t Speak Anymore’, the final single from their upcoming album How to Build an Ocean: Instructions, out 26th April, 2024. The single follows on from ‘I Wanna Feel Calm’, ‘Hot Chocolate’ and ‘Things That Look Like Mistakes.’ Their co-headline tour with New Jersey indie rockers, The Happy Fits begins later on this month, with support from Lexie Carroll. Purchase tickets here.
‘We Don’t Speak Anymore’ is a eulogy for the friends once known - specifically, online friends. Having built their fanbase almost entirely through the world wide web, Bears in Trees are no strangers to the internet. However, their knowledge of how to navigate it stems from growing up on social media. “I grew up surrounded by online friends”, Nick states. They, much like many other Gen-Z’s, found connection and community through online fandoms, forums, subcultures and shared interests, and despite never meeting in real life, held their online comrades in high regard.
Nonetheless, adulthood, reality and forgetting to text back has a habit of causing these virtual kinships to suffer neglect. “It’s natural that in time, you will drift apart,” comments Nick, “but it’s hard not to wonder; what would have happened if we’d lived across the street from one another? If I knew your face instead of your URL and I recognised you on the train? I wanted to try and write a song that encompassed how meaningful these people were in my life, while also understanding that we’d probably never speak again.”
About How to Build an Ocean: Instructions:
The upcoming album, How to Build an Ocean: Instructions is a project doused in personal conflict, but simultaneously a love letter to the normal and how beauty can be found in just being. Charged with references to literature, philosophy and film, as well as first hand experiences, the band explore thoughts of what it means to find purpose when everything feels purposeless, all whilst ultimately instructing themselves to find “small joys in the face of cosmic indifference”. Produced by George Perks (Enter Shikari, The Doves, You Me At Six), How to Build an Ocean: Instructions marks an exciting new development for Bears in Trees, being the first album they’ve recorded with the help of consultants outside of the band themselves, having previously relied on drummer George’s expertise, who outside of the band, works as an engineer at Subfrantic Studios. Tenderness, triumph, and a totally unashamed feeling of enjoying the ride whilst they're on it, How to Build an Ocean: Instructions is their definitive statement.
Though no matter how far this record takes them, the most important thing is that they are together and doing what they love. "We started the band because we loved hanging out with our friends and wanted to make stupid music together," Iain concludes. "That's always been the reason, and it hasn't changed. All we want to do is make what we do as honest and authentic as possible. That's what it means to be in the Bears in Trees business."
Connoisseurs of the digital age, the band built their reputation themselves from scratch, foregoing the traditional media routes and climbing the social media ropes. They obtained millions of likes on TikTok and engaged with their fanbase proactively on Discord and Patreon before ever dipping their toes in the music industry support pool. This impressive knowledge of navigating internet culture, paired with their vivacious, comedic charm, and easy listening and bright bops have earned them a passionate and loyal following of ‘sandboxes’ (the allocated fanbase name), saw them sell out London’s Electric Ballroom and play alongside artists such as Pale Waves, NOAHFINNCE, Waterparks, The Maine and Lovejoy, as well as scoring festival slots at Slam Dunk, 2000 Trees, Community and many more.
Tracklist:
Your Favourite Coat
Things That Look Like Mistakes
Injured Crow
I Don’t See Anything I Don’t Like About You
All You Get Is Confetti
Tai Chi With My Dad
I Wanna Feel Calm
Henry Says
Hot Chocolate
Nothing Cures Melancholy Like Looking at Maps
We Don’t Speak Anymore
I Don’t Wanna Be Angry
