"The Dirtbag Boyband Songbola" - Bears In Trees at Rough Trade, Liverpool

On a glorious Saturday evening last week, I had the absolute pleasure of attending Bears In Trees’ first show on their autumn tour of the UK and Netherlands. Taking place in sunny, sunny Liverpool, at local staple Rough Trade, the tour posters promised previews of songs for their upcoming album, and the band’s socials teased something they called a “songbola”. Safe to say when the Haps’ editor told me this and asked if I would review it, I was sat. And then I stood up and got the bus into town.

Filing into the venue, alongside my fellow brightly-coloured travellers, I was immediately delighted by the promise of on-stage activities. I could spot a spin-the-wheel, a tombola and an additional mysterious hamster-wheel-esque jar with a strangely few bingo balls in it. All very intriguing.

Opening for the self-titled “dirtbag boyband”, was frontwoman and writer for Chase Petra, Hunter Allen, with a debut acoustic set: effortlessly sliding between high notes, head and chest resonances, and with a vocal tonality expertly befitting the genre. Her performance sounds complete despite the songs being stripped-back - her entire body moves to the instrumentation we can’t hear, inviting us into the story. The acoustic instrumentation is perfectly translated, teasing what it may sound like with a band arrangement, a sliding chord here possibly mimicking a lead line there on another stage. Allen’s engagement with the audience is brilliant to watch - cracking jokes, giving some not so gentle but very enthusiastic encouragement to everyone to join in, all leading to a gorgeously juxtaposing moment at the end where I found myself chanting the word “alone” with a hundred other people.

In-between sets, it becomes glaringly apparent how well Bears In Trees know the community they’ve cultivated over the last 12 years, with everyone singing along to the well-curated playlist. Background music ranges from Charlie XCX’s brat to Hayley William’s Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party, before Ke$ha and Pitbull’s Timber soars through the speakers and the main event takes their place on the stage. 

The energy is infectious - Callum (vocals, keys and synth, ukulele, keytar, acoustic guitar, flute, whatever he feels like picking up) spins “The Banger Wheel”, and Heaven Sent Is A Coffee Cup, from their first debut album and everybody else smiled back (2021) is selected as the band’s opening track. Callum is in the audience before Iain (vocals, bass) has even taken the mic, singing from the centre of the room with everyone joining in, setting a precedent for a night of togetherness, emotional-openness and, most importantly, fun!

What sets this tour apart from any they’ve done before, is its spontaneity. The “banger wheel” has 4 different songs on it, the “songbola” has 36 possible songs and the mysterious jar I mentioned earlier has 5 new songs, some of which are being played and heard for the very first time. Iain’s sister did the calculations - there are 3.7 quintillion possible shows that could be played.

The tombola in the corner selects their next song to be Kind Love, much to the audience’s delight. Callum cracks out the ukulele, Iain’s bass rattles my ribcage and I can’t help but feel a little sentimental at how unrecognisable and yet totally the same the band is from the one I first saw live somewhere in Manchester in early 2022. Each members’ individuality and outfit is distinct, and yet they’ve never sounded more cohesive.

Someone in the front row has the pleasure of picking out of the jar a brand new song that the band themselves hasn’t even heard in its entirety, currently titled I Am A Gun, which Iain and George (drums) appear very excited to play. Introduced as a song about bay-blading and as Callum’s acoustic guitar debut, the entrance is an immediate punch to the chest. Bears In Trees’ trademark of fast-paced emotional unloading in the verses is accompanied by a catchy canon in the chorus and a half-time bridge - brand new song number 1, and they hit it out the park. You’d never think they had to practice 44 other songs at the same time.

The next couple of songs out the tombola are Ibuprofen (a favourite of mine) and I Don’t Wanna Be Angry, the former performed as a defiant dedication to friendship, the band looking to the sky as they chant keep me safe with the crowd in tow, while the latter is played with a fierce passion, Iain in particular appearing to feel every lyric as if they just wrote it.

Hunter Allen is invited back on stage, much to everyone’s delight, to pick the next new song, Freight Train (which comes with a disclaimer that jumping in front of trains is a bad idea). Vivid storytelling combined with nihilism, suicidal ideation and a juxtaposingly upbeat instrumentation embodies everything Bears In Trees has built and written up until this point:

“I’ll jump under a freight train

Let it spread me all over the country

I know I’ll feel most alive

Right before I f*cking die

Well I wish that counted for something”

Vivid storytelling combined with nihilism, suicidal ideation and a juxtaposingly upbeat instrumentation embodies everything Bears In Trees has built and written up until this point.

An audience member, with a beautiful spinner hat, pulls I Wanna Feel Calm and Injured Crow out of the songbola and Nick is a ray of sunshine and energy on stage right, enthusiastically singing and dancing, while the audience fills in the harmonies. Callum takes full advantage of his moments of fluidity as a singer, engaging the crowd at every moment. Every song bleeds with a desperation to be better, get better, connect better and stay hopeful against all odds. 

Three songs are chosen from the songbola, Little Cellist, Caffeine and Bad Decisions, and I’m Doing Pushups, and the band questions their decision to do a random setlist: 

“Do you want to do a slow one?”

“The wheel decides.”

“This is stressful.”

“We’re putting our mental health on the line for you.”

As they play their newly released Caffeine and Bad Decisions, it is clearer than ever how every instrument has its frequency, and every member has its place. You would think with such a large discography, there’d be the odd song that had too much or too little going on, but that isn’t the case for Bears In Trees. Nothing is unnecessary, nothing is overplayed, everything is as simple or as complicated as it needs to be, and you hear that in how complete every song sounds in both its storytelling and instrumentation. 

I Am Cold is followed by a new one affectionately (and temporarily, the band stresses) called Got No Limbs. At this point, the band’s collective sanity is crumbling before our eyes:

Iain:“Callum’s giving up” 

Callum: “No, I’m giving into the bit” 

Nick: “This is the most overwhelmed I’ve been since I took my driving test”

Every moment is full of moving parts they can’t prepare for, as the songbola decides their fate. Fresh Concrete is chosen by the wheel, followed by Simply Won’t Believe It and Good Rhymes For Bad Times, and more of the joyous instrumentation and heartbreaking lyrics that everyone in the room loves erupt from the stage, bonding everyone in their happiest and most desperate moment.

Possibly my favourite of the new songs is pulled next, with the working title H.M.S. Nicholas and the lyrics “My body is a machine that turns everything into anxiety”. There is an inexplicable sense of community in a room of strangers, everyone connecting to these songs for the first time. Cassiopeia gets an immediate roar from the audience at just the first note. This is apparently meant to be the final song of the night, but Callum points out there is still one more left on the banger wheel, looking carefully towards George, who then appears from the darkness at the back of the stage to spin it for the final time. Iain announces the fighters in the ring with the passion and speed of an auctioneer for Left Right Goodnight, but not before they terrorise George by saying if we scream loud enough we can get another ANOTHER song. 

The band finishes to whoops, cheers, applause and definitely a lot of crying, and as they exit the stage, the audience begins to chant. “One More Song” turns to “Henry Says” in the back, “Reverberate” in the front, and they come back, spinning the tombola one really final time (deciding it’s only fair to disappoint everyone equally rather than disrupt the spirit of the songbola). Hot Chocolate is chosen, which everyone decides is a good finisher (thank god) and the band launches into their final song. The energy in the room vibrates, as despairing and hopeful as the beginning of the set, with the crowd dancing ecstatically to the keytar solo and joining in with the chorus:

“Well if you never called it love

Then it can’t be love

And if you never called it heartbreak

Then how can you be heartbroken

And I’m begging you to feel something

Dream outside your bedroom window for a change

I’m begging you to feel

I’m begging you to feel

I’m begging you to feel just a little bit less”

As the song ends, the band scrambles to get to the front in time to do their traditional dirtbag boyband dance, and I spot a few folks at the front joining in. The show ends in elation, joy and a sustaining good feeling.

I always know I’ve been to a good gig when I leave inspired. This one I left bursting at the seams with ideas of how to integrate the energy of the show tonight into my own songs, and dive headfirst into their discography with the same passion and enthusiasm as I did when I heard I See Blue for the first time in 2019. It’s like when you go to the cinema, spend a couple of hours living someone else’s life, and if it’s a good film, you leave looking at the world a little differently, a little more colourfully. This band’s ability to connect with their listeners, such a broad range of people, through devastatingly specific lyrics is uncanny, giving the feeling that although everyone who hears them may have their own unique story, Bears In Trees knows the chapters, and they’re here to guide you through. They don’t deny life is difficult, they don’t deny the world is falling apart, they just say “hey, we know, and we’re doing it together”. And then they play a keytar solo. What more could you want?