alternative

Bear's Den

1 festival played →

British folk-rock project that has gradually traded banjos for warm, expansive synth textures — hushed harmonies and slow-building emotional payoffs.

Bear's Den is a British band formed in 2012, initially associated with the wave of London folk acts that emerged early that decade. Core members Andrew Davie and Kevin Jones had previously played together in a band called Cherbourg, and named the new project after Bearsden, a town near where Davie's grandparents lived and where he first began writing songs. Guitarist and banjo player Joey Haynes joined soon after.

Their early material leaned on acoustic guitar, banjo and close vocal harmony, with Davie's voice at the centre. Over subsequent releases the group moved away from those instruments towards keyboards, synthesisers and fuller studio arrangements, while keeping the quiet-to-loud structure and the plainly worded, often melancholy songwriting of the earlier records.

Their first tour took them across the United States in campervans alongside Ben Howard, Nathaniel Rateliff and the Staves, an experience documented in the 2014 film Austin to Boston, which premiered at the BFI London Film Festival. That year they also received the Momentum Deezer Award from the PRS for Music Foundation.

The debut album, Islands, came out in 2014 on Communion Records; its song "Above the Clouds of Pompeii" earned an Ivor Novello nomination, and the album was eventually certified Silver in 2016 and Gold in 2023. Joey Haynes left the band in 2016, the same year the group released their second album, Red Earth & Pouring Rain, which brought two nominations at the UK Americana Awards.

Bear's Den went on to release So That You Might Hear Me (2019), Fragments (2020) and Blue Hours (2022), along with a soundtrack album and nine EPs. In 2025 Kevin Jones left the group, leaving Davie as its sole remaining permanent member.

Read more

alternative