bears in trees - and everybody else smiled back

By Maisie Spofford

“the best and worst moments of our lives have a morning after. and everybody else smiled back is about those mornings after.”

A collection of tracks at once heavy hitting and hopeful, and everybody else smiled back is an album that speaks to the Gen Z experience. It is the first studio album of the South London-based group Bears in Trees, released in November of 2021 with Counter Intuitive records. Falling at the intersection of pop-punk, indie, folk punk, and emo genres, Bears in Trees prefers to declare itself a “dirtbag boyband,” comparable to the likes of the 1975, Fall Out Boy, Wallows, Cavetown, and Twenty One Pilots, to name a few. “We’re a bit like one direction if one direction had a crisis of self, started an emo band, and watched too many coming of age films.”

Like many Gen Z success stories, Bears in Trees has TikTok to thank for its ascent into the ear-buds of young emos worldwide. The group is fully aware of their demographic, and makes TikToks and Instagram reels humorously targeting their listeners. Target audience examples include those who had either a Dan and Phil, Emo Trinity, or Superwholock phase, ‘people who ate rocks when they were kids’ and ‘gifted kids who burnt out in 2019’ (I really felt that one, ouch). Basically, anyone who was on Tumblr in the years 2013-2018. Social media is central for the band, as it was a TikTok that got them signed to Counter Intuitive Records. Frequent content creation has remained central to their marketing strategy ever since. Either Instagram knows I definitely had a Tumblr phase, or their strategy was successful, because it was a reel on my explore page that clued me onto Bears in Trees. 

Before I listened to any of their songs, I became attached to their funny and relatable internet presence. With their engagement on social media, Bears in Trees offers a different model of the ‘artist.’ In many cases, the artist can seem aloof and inaccessible, distanced from their music and fanbase and leaving their music on a platter for the listener to dissect. Bears in Trees takes a more intimate, conversational approach, encouraging listeners to share their interpretations and covers of the tracks on TikTok and Instagram. They even connect with fans on weekly livestreams where guitarist and songwriter Nick writes sonic fanfiction (and no he is not ashamed of it).  

While encouraging any interpretation of their album, they don’t keep their own intentions secret. Of the track “I’m Doing Push Ups,” the band wrote that it’s about “realising that some events in your life don’t have a meaning or moral behind them,” especially concerned with how we try to imbue meaning into every moment, even something as trivial as an Instagram caption.

“Some things just aren't meant to make sense /

Some things aren't meant to be represented /

We talk about it in the gaps, in the silence /

The posts we delete, and the captions we edit”

The music video, with frankly absurd imagery such as Callum (vocals, ukulele) aggressively eating a cob of corn that he takes out of a french press, the group shaving an Elmo stuffed animal, and Iain (vocals, bass) breaking a chair. However, aurally, this song does make sense, quickly becoming a fan favorite. The ukulele combined with electric guitar is typical of Bears in Trees’ sound, along with the aggressively British vocals, which I guess they can’t help? Never taking themselves too seriously, the band jokes about precisely the fact of their accents in a reel in which they mock the (honestly valid) theory that “british people losing their accents when they sing proves that they just use it for attention.” 

‘Mossy Cobblestone,’ the shortest track on the album, is a sweet ukulele diddy. As Bears in Trees acknowledges themselves on Instagram, if you bought a ukulele at age fifteen just to play ‘House of Gold’ by Twenty One Pilots and base your entire personality off of it, you might vibe with their band, and especially this song. To me, this song is a bit about bridging childhood and adulthood. It’s about the time that songwriter Nick fell off his skateboard and cut up his face, but also about the joy of seeing a friend in their new flat, especially considering Nick felt he and some of his friends might not back it see their uni years.

As you may have realized is typical of Bears in Trees, ‘Great Heights', the first single of the album, is another upbeat yet also deeply introspective and even heart-wrenching tune. It is about the potential that we could reach if we weren’t faced by dissociation and depression: as Nick puts it, “if we could just make our beds in the morning.” Yet the hopelessness apparent in the lyrics is met with spirit and joy in the instrumental accompaniment, giving you a song you can still dance around your room to, perhaps even while making your bed in the morning.

And that’s part of the beauty of Bears in Trees. They don’t shy away from the difficult parts of life, like processing trauma, experiencing panic attacks, or crashing your skateboard, but they will be there to provide a comforting space to affirm those experiences while still remaining optimistic. They are an authentic voice that speaks to the difficulties of growing up on the internet and social media, made even more relatable by their own Tumblr phases that they choose to embrace rather than cringe away from. Afterall, the important part of our lives is not who we were, but who we are now. Time will pass, full of our best and worst moments, but we must always embrace those ‘mornings after.’