Eliza and the Bear

After the Friday I have just had I’m not sure I will ever be able to go to a normal festival again. Especially Reading Festival where a day spent with a bear named Eliza and a couple of dons named Broco mixed with beer and energy drinks are the norm.

The day started off like any other, driving in my Mazda to work on a cloudy British day. Except the office today is none other than Reading Festival where the weather seemed fitting, as did the wellies on my feet.

When you arrive at a festival the first thing you have to do is check the state of the toilets and grab a beer, and that is exactly what I did. Except maybe change beer to beer’s... as I lost count of how many I had, but at a festival such as Reading who’s keeping count! Loaded with beer’s and energy drink thanks to the relentless stand I was ready to leave the comfort of the guest area with its immaculate toilets and enter the muddy fields to enjoy the amazing music Reading has to offer.

Kicking the day off was Mariachi el Bronx and with a line up including Bastille, Mumford and Sons, Don Broco and Alt J I was in for a real treat.

In between sets I would retreat back to the guest area and make use of the clean toilets and refuel on beers and overpriced food. Whilst refuelling I bumped into the boys from Eliza and the Bear who If you haven’t heard them already are an awesome up tempo band with a poppy element and breath taking music solo’s. We were invited backstage and managed to bypass the security to the festival Republic stage where the likes of bears den, django django and Jake Isaac who I bumped into after his folky set (as you do) were also playing. - 1883 Magazine

Over the next couple of months Sky customers will be hearing Eliza and the Bear's latest single Friends quite regularly with this feature promoting Sky Movies' Family Channel.

Simon Pursehouse, director of music services, Sentric Music explained: "This sync came at the perfect time for Eliza and the Bear - they'd just completed their first headline tour of the UK and then supported Paramore on their UK arena dates so their profile has grown significantly in the recent past. With the single racking up over 125K streams on SoundCloud and other syncs for Sony Playstation's BigFest and the trailer for the indie movie Good Vibrations (a film about Terri Hooley) under their belt; it looks luke these guys are going to be ones to watch in the very near future."

Despite the band name, London indie rockers Eliza and the Bear actually consists of five guys; James Kellegher (lead vocals, guitar), Callie Noakes (vocals, keyboards), Martin Dukelow (vocals, guitar), Chris Brand (bass), Paul Kevin Jackson (drums). - Music Week

It's safe to say that the next time this London outfit play Glasgow, there will be a considerably bigger audience and venue on offer.

They're folk influenced but with a much more poppy edge than the frankly annoying Mumford And Sons; there's a swagger about Eliza rather than the drippy, public school vegetarian vibe of Mumford.

There's a bit of Go Team, a touch of Arcade Fire, almost a hint of The Cure at times, plus a whole lot of polished musicianship and plenty of choruses more infectious than flu. Highlight was the thrilling Upon The North, the AA side single (with The Southern Wild), which is out this week and set to make them massive.

One of the most exciting new bands you'll hear this year.

- The Scottish Sunday Mail

Having already earned the title of Zane Lowe's 'Next Hype' on Radio 1, it was only a matter of time 'til Eliza and the Bear made their debut on our 'You Need To Hear This' round-up. For an emerging band, they've already conquered highly coveted territories- selling out The Borderline, storming top fests Hard Rock Calling and Secret Garden Party, being invited to open for Paramore's super-massive arena tour... y'know, just your standard mind-boggling shit like that. Their rapid rise to such giddy heights has been so intense we're wondering how the five-piece aren't wobbling around the place with persistent head-rush. Instead, they continue to knock out the highest class of upbeat, indie-pop earworms to help you take on the world- much like they are, really. Forthcoming single 'Friends' is an utter stunner to look forward to- but for now, sit back and breathe a huge sigh of contentment as 'Upon The North' works its magic on your blissed-out ears... - Huffington Post

Eliza and the Bear - Lion's Heartb- This Band of five guys give Mumford & Sons a run for their money on this euphoric piece of Folk-pop. Startling, Immediate and wonderfully impassioned. 4/5 - The Sun

Hometown: London.

The lineup: James Kellegher (lead vocals, guitar), Callie Noakes (vocals, keyboards), Martin Dukelow (vocals, guitar), Chris Brand (bass), Paul Kevin Jackson (drums).

The background: Eliza and the Bear are a promising new indie rock band from London. Of course, in a week in which My Bloody Valentine have returned with a new album that forces us to focus once again on what an indie rock band, new or old, can achieve with the usual instruments in an averagely appointed recording studio, "promising" is a relative term. In this case, the promise is not of a band who will be reinventing the wheel, but of a band who will undoubtedly prove of value at gigs and festivals over the next few months. It's a low ambition from a band who put a high premium on good old-fashioned rousing indie entertainment.

The last time we saw Kevin Shields, funnily enough, was at a Flaming Lips gig, and we say funnily enough because we're interviewing Wayne Coyne tonight and Eliza and the Bear are very much a post-Lips band, or at least they're a Lips-influenced band. The "post" bit of that sentence suggests they're taking the Lips to the next level, or into another dimension; they're not. They just strike us as a band who wouldn't sound the way they do if they hadn't heard She Don't Use Jelly or Christmas at the Zoo. They go heavy on the exuberance, they hammer home the idea that happiness is a highly desirable altered state: they give good joy. We never wrote about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah for New band of the day and we have never heard any of their music, but we'd dare venture that they're in that ballpark: boisterous, cacophonous indie made by enthusiastic young men who want to communicate their excitement at being alive, even if that excitement is tempered by an awareness that all pleasure is provisional.

What else can we tell you? We can tell you that there is no Eliza, that they're a close-knit group of male friends, and that James the lead singer suffers from arthritis in his hands and finds playing music is the only thing that relieves the pain. Oh, and that Eliza and the Bear is the title of a collection of poems by Eleanor Rees "in which the darkness of the city stalks the dream-time of fairytales – Rees's use of fairy stories and night visions radically re-imagines the female experience through the psychic collisions of the body and our desires". O-kaay. None of that comes across in the music. Their first track Trees was produced by Peter Miles, who did Dry the River, and there are similarities with the latter's jaunty indie-folk. They've just played their first headline show, at St Pancras Old Church in London, and they're about to release their first single, a double A-side, if that means anything in this digital day and age. The Southern Wild captures some of the wondrousness of Flaming Lips but has none of their uniqueness of vision and ziggurat ambition. The voice is cracked, the instrumentation stacked with a sense of a band teetering close to collapse, there are trumpets and there is tumult and there is that very Lips quality of sadness being ingrained in every happy moment. But there are also oh-ohs worthy of Chris Martin as well as an overall bumptiousness, and the general impression is of a band who will make you party come what may. Upon the North is equally exultant and jubilant. What are they so upbeat about? It's like being force-fed euphoria. Two songs and we're full.

The buzz: "One of the UK's most promising young bands."

The truth: They specialise in indie's three R's: jolly, jaunty joy.

Most likely to: Be confused with Esben and the Witch.

Least likely to: Induce psychic collisions.

What to buy: The double-A-side single Upon the North/The Southern Wild is released on 25 February by Generator.

File next to: Thumpers, Arcade Fire, the Lumineers, Dry the River.

Links: elizaandthebear.com.
- The Guardian

'there’s a fraternal glow about this five-piece indie band whose rousing, new EP Lion’s Heart led to roaring singalong at festivals' - The Daily Telegraph