aaamusic | On 01, Mar 2012

        BEAR DRIVER

New Single-

“Big Love” – Out 26 March

Debut album Bear Driver due on June 4

Live- Communion at Notting Hill Arts Club April 1

 

“For an outfit only just finding their feet, [this] is nothing short of astonishing” –  The Guardian

Self-proclaimed ‘sunny-slacker pop’ exponents Bear Driver will release their barrelling new single ‘Big Love’ on March 26, through Adventure Club Records. The track is the first cut to be taken from their debut album Bear Driver, due out on June 4. The band have picked up a raft of critical support  off the back of double-A side ‘Never Never/Let The Cold’, and recently secured a much sought-after spot on Daytrotter’s newly launched UK sessions- plus radio support from Radio 1, 6 Music and XFM.

 

Named after a star constellation, Bear Driver’s roots stretch back to the slightly less celestial origins of Leeds, where members Oli Deakin and Harry Dean gravitated into musical partnership- ‘We’d always played together in other people’s bands and said we should start our own. Then we lived in a house together and said we should start a band. Then we booked ourselves a gig and we had to start a band’.

 

The key moment for Bear Driver came last year following their SXSW appearance (playing alongside longstanding heroes …..And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead), when through a stroke of good fortune, they secured a live show at New York’s legendary Mercury Lounge.  Having traipsed the winding paths of Central Park by day, the band came entirely by chance upon a Yo La Tengo charity gig, which included performances by David Byrne and Glen Mercer. Galvanised by these encounters with two hugely influential bands, the band returned to London intent on recording their debut album.

 

Bear Driver is a ‘live’ band in every sense of the term; new material blisters with the hiss of an album recorded entirely live, and in some cases, in a single take. For evidence of this precarious science in action, look no further than the kineticism of lead track ‘Big Love’. Whilst maybe not the product you’d expect of a writing session fuelled by wine and eighties goth-pop – ‘we just spent an entire evening listening to The Cure whilst drinking’ – it’s a freewheeling nod to past love which teeters atop a huge wash of Dinosaur Jr guitar fuzz.

 

The self-produced debut album Bear Driver, recorded in the unlikely surroundings of a disused swimming pool-come-studio- previously favoured by Nick Cave and Graham Coxon- will follow June 4 2012.

 

LIVE

1 April LONDON Communion @ Notting Hill Arts Club