Earlier in the year we caught up with Bear’s Den front man Andrew Davie – excited about the upcoming tour and record and letting slip secrets of Taylor Swift mixtapes. Presumably TayTay has been booming out of the tour van stereo on the short journey up the M1 from a sold out Dublin show to a sold out Belfast one. In fact, most evenings of the tour in support of the ‘Islands’
Can they live up to the hype on a quiet Monday night in Belfast?
Voodoo is something of a strange choice as the venue for the show. More often than not frequented by punks and metal fans, the crowd upstairs is suitably more fresh-faced and conservatively dressed than usual. The business end of the bar is at the opposite end of the building to the stage and the nooks, crannies and pillars throughout have ardent fans craning their necks for a glimpse of the band. The latter two of these facts mean that in some ways this show is even more about the music.
With additional session musicians in tow, Bear’s Den have grown in numbers and stature since we last saw them in McHugh’s. The transition from introverted acoustic three-piece to full band at first appears to be a subtle one but when the brass kicks in on opener ‘Elysium’, the sound is intense, powerful. It’s a real heartbreaker of a first tune and the maudlin feel endures through ‘Mother’ and back to ‘Don’t Let The Sun Steal You Away’ from 2013’s Without/Within’
The band hit their stride with the more upbeat ‘Writing on the Wall’ and shapes are thrown as instruments are interchanged on stage. The crowd is a hushed one, and are rewarded with an unplugged reworking of ‘Sophie’. You can see a temptation to sing along etched on the faces of the front few rows but even the biggest hitting songs are greeted with almost reverential applause and awed silence throughout.
‘Above The Clouds of Pompeii’ and ‘Isaac’ are contenders for performance of the evening until the main part of the set is wrapped up with an impassioned ‘Agape’. The murmurers and lip-syncers finally give up and join in.
With little room to manoeuvre and nowhere to hide, there are bumbling encore jokes before Andrew, Kevin and Joey get truly intimate with their Belfast audience performing ‘Bad Blood’ in our midst, with sweaty beards and stirring harmonies. Camera phones are aloft throughout the venue and as they blink off one-by-one, the band return to the stage, crank everything up loud and end with a sonic wave of ‘Sahara’.
With each Belfast return, Bear’s Den grow in confidence, in size and fill bigger rooms. We’re already looking forward to the next one.