for fans of Mumford & Sons, Sufjan Stevens, Bastille

singles to download ‘Issac,’ ‘Elysium,’ ‘Bad Blood’

No, the dining hall did not just release an album; Bear’s Den is also a legitimate band. And over the summer, Bear’s Den released a very important music video for its song “Elysium,” the newest single to be included on its fall album “Islands.” While filming a group of students for the video over the course of five days at Seattle Pacific University, a school shooting occurred. The group that the band’s cinematographer had been following happened to have been close with the student who died in that shooting. The song’s lyrics, including the opening line “Brother do you believe in an afterlife,” rang eerily true as a benediction of the student’s death, and as such, a video that was originally intended to be simply of students living through the typical college lifestyle became a poignant documentary on how we as a society deal with grief and sorrow and senseless violence.

Fast-forward four months and the album “Islands” was finally released this week. On the 10-track record, “Elysium” comes only second to last. The raw emotion conveyed by the song’s lyrics could have been lost among the first eight tracks; it could have been forgotten in the time since the tragedy, yet somehow the album as a whole still manages to evoke the simple vulnerability first exposed in the video and carry it through to completion.

Bear’s Den classifies itself as a folk band. This statement is important because it immediately brings to mind that one recurring point of comparison for the band’s work and every other folk band that enters the music scene: Mumford & Sons. Even though it is true that Bear’s Den toured with the Gentlemen of the Road, the two bands’ sounds could not be any further apart on the folk spectrum. While Mumford tends to focus on the driving banjos and raspy, yelled lyrics, Bear’s Den prefers to showcase the softer side of the genre, exploring emotions and real pain, and this comes through clearly on “Islands.”

The album begins with track “Agape,” a song already released on one of Bear’s Den’s early EPs. However, this version of “Agape” is faster—using the driving banjos the band usually scorns—than the previous incarnation. It feels like the album itself acts as a journey, starting on the Mumford side of folk and slowly descending into the softer regions that Bear’s Den has perfected on its past releases. The urgency in lead singer Andrew Davie’s voice felt in “Agape” disappears by “Above the Clouds of Pompeii” and is replaced by a comforting resignation. By “Stubborn Beast,” the anger no longer resides in Davie’s voice but has dissipated into the softer strums of the banjo.

The album’s finale, “Bad Blood,” however, is its coup d’etat. In a song that speaks of the lowest form of desperation, Davie affects an almost expectant lilt to his voice, almost whispering, “I f—ed it and I f—ed it” marking the only time Bear’s Den resorts to profanity, yet still doing so innocuously, so that it seems a fitting close to an album which has slowly been descending into the quieter, softer spaces.

The common gripe against Bear’s Den is that it is too passive, too mild-mannered to be folk-rock, that it isn’t enough like Mumford & Sons to be successful. Yet “Islands” exists on a different plain from Mumford. The men of Bear’s Den aren’t interested in drunkenly flipping tables or copying sounds; they prefer to deal in stoic reflection. The band’s sound on “Islands” is always ethereal, almost breezy, and although this serves to distract from the weight of its words, the power of the emotion is never lost.