Meet Bear Hands

I discovered the Brooklyn band Bear Hands about a year ago, at a show at Webster Hall's Studio, and liked them a lot. The songs were catchy but very dancey, the bassist did this cool thing where he doubled on percussion, the singer doubled on guitar and a Korg synth, the guitar parts were quite original... I even asked their publicist at the time if they wanted to do an interview, and the band replied that they'd rather wait until they had something to talk about.

Then the band wound up having a very quiet year (although they did perform at the Village Voice's Siren Fest in July) and I didn't hear much about them again.

This past Monday, though, I was invited to see Bear Hands perform a few songs at a studio in Brooklyn called The Rumpus Room (I can't even tell you what part of Brooklyn we were in, but it was farther south than I've ever gone on the R train, under an elevated highway and across the street from a live poulty market.) Cantora Records will be releasing Bear Hands' new album in February and apparently this studio was shared by the label and some video artists, who set up a papier-mache forest for them to do a video shoot.

My friend Jason (sometimes known as the electroclash artist Poingly) was there and we talked a bit about his music blog, which you should definitely all check out - The End Of Irony.net. Especially since I "borrowed" this photo from him.

I felt like a pair of brown shoes in a room full of tuxedos, as the meet 'n' greet was populated entirely by 20something hipsters, several of whom looked like they stepped directly out of an Urban Outfitter catalog and all of whom seemed to be texting, tweeting, or otherwise twiddling with smart phones the entire evening. But I did get to chat a bit with Dylan and TJ, the lead singer and drummer, and really enjoyed meeting them. They were both very down to earth guys who seemed genuinely glad that people had come to this out-of-the-way studio on a weeknight to see them, and I will be eagerly waiting to check out their new album.