“and everyone else smiled back” by Bears in Trees Album Review
Written by Aiden Nelson
I’ve been waiting for this album.
Bears in Trees’s debut album, “and everyone else smiled back” was released on November 19, 2021. The album, long-awaited by fans (myself included), did not disappoint.
Composed of four members – George Berry on drums, Nick Peters on guitar, Callum Litchfield doing vocals and keyboard, and Iain Gillespie also on vocals and guitar – the self-proclaimed “dirtbag boy band” hails from South London. The album runs just over 40 minutes with thirteen songs, three of which were singles. “Great Heights” was released in early September of this year, soon followed by “I’m Doing Push Ups,” and finally, “Little Cellist.”
The album has variety all while maintaining a certain Bears in Trees vibe. It’s anything but monotonous, yet the shifts are not jarring. For instance, the upbeat, stripped down ukulele jam “Mossy Cobblestones” is distinctly different from the dreamy, twinkling “Confidant” that follows it, yet they flow seamlessly. The band moves from indie to folksy to soft emo with ease, with the lyrics stringing everything together. There are motifs of parties and walking home and the mornings after – common experiences for a young adult. The songs shimmer with hope and nostalgia, with sadness and love. The songs have a tenderness to them,
The lyrics, while intricate, are a gut punch of relatability. The opening track, “Cut Corners on Short Walks” gracefully handles sexual assault; lines like “I would ask myself constantly/ Am I remembering that right / A paralytic memory / Hazy daze of a night / Was I truly destroyed by an imperfect person / Was I just co-opting the curses of coercion” are vulnerable without being over the top. Through the album, topics of mental illness and trauma are explored in the poetry of the lyrics with a refreshing honesty.
Bears in Trees references specific moments that, at their core, have a universal emotion behind them. In the third track, “Baggy Hoodies,” the first verse refers to sitting in a bathroom cheering up a crying friend. While not everyone has had that exact moment of playing folk songs to their friend in the bathroom “being dripped on by the shower,” the sense of comradery behind the verse is familiar. The hope and love of friends is something that permeates the lyrics of each song. The band’s official Tumblr account made a post describing the album, saying their opening track “Cut Corners on Short Walks is about: “finding hope in your friendships, about watching the sunrise, about feeling whole again.” The entire album feels like it’s about this – finding hope, loving your friends, experiencing the world as a fragile and intricate human being.
Part of the experience of the album is outside of the music. Bears in Trees has a strong social media presence, with 110K followers on Instagram and almost 400K on TikTok. Their posts are funny and honest, often ridiculous and avant-garde, the personalities of each band member shining through. Their TikTok account is how I first found the band in the spring of 2020 – I was immediately enamored with the goofy twenty-something musicians and their music. Their content online was wholesome, their music raw yet hopeful. Their track “Reverberate” from their 2020 EP “I Want to Feel Chaotic” was particularly influential in my healing from my mother’s death the previous fall.
The album is a wonderful amalgamation of music, summing up the experience of being a mentally ill twenty-something trying your hardest. Put on your earbuds and favorite baggy hoodie and have your main character moment to this album; whether you’ve been a fan since they were playing in parking lots back in 2016 or this is your first foray into the Bears in Trees discography, “and everyone else smiled back” is worth the listen.
