BEAR HANDS play The Palladium Sep. 27 and Music Box Sep. 28; photo Nina Westervelt
In support of their new LP You’ll Pay For This, electro rockers Bear Hands will be playing The Palladium Sep. 27 and Music Box Sep. 28. The album continues the eclectic sound of 2014’s Distraction, which provided the band with their first radio hit, “Giants”, which finally pushed them into the hard won spotlight.
Coming up on their 10-year anniversary, the music has matured along with the band. Best encapsulated in the song “2AM”, a catchy rumination on growing up and not being able to party as hard, the inspiration for which vocalist and guitarist Dylan Rau claims is twofold.
“Ted [Feldman] and I wrote that when I had just turned 30, so obviously, that was weighing on my mind a little bit,” Rau said. “I’m also in a relationship with this really great girl that just started six months ago, and I hadn’t been with anybody for a long time before that. I think that definitely makes you think twice about needing to be at the bar every night.”
Aging pops up a few more times on the record, perhaps attributable to the band’s new stability. Years of working other jobs and struggling to scrape by has made their current success all the more sweet. When other bands with less resolve would have called it a day, Bear Hands hung tough.
“I’m proud of the fact that it’s been a gradual, incremental increase over the years,” Rau said. “There wasn’t really one moment or a big break where it was like, ‘Oh this is it. I don’t have to worry anymore.’ It’s been a slow burn and notches on the belt, opening bigger shows, headlining bigger shows, selling more records, getting played on the radio. You just build a little mountain of these things and hope that you’re proud of it at the end of the day.”
So what’s been the most rewarding thing about finally breaking through? Hearing your song on the radio? Playing to huge crowds that know all the words to your songs?
Bear Hands at The Observatory; photo Lauren Ratkowski
“Money is a good one,” Rau laughs. “Obviously, having fans face-to-face react to certain songs, or identifying moments or lyrics from the record that they specifically enjoy, that feels really good, too.”
Making it all this way with your buddies from college must feel pretty good, too. Rau and Feldman met at Wesleyan University in Connecticut before hooking up with bassist Val Loper and drummer RJ Orscher. Besides cutting their teeth on the local music scene (which included fellow Wesleyan students MGMT), Rau and Feldman, both studied film, a medium that informs Bear Hands to this day.
“Ted actually directed three of our videos, “Agora,” “What A Drag,” and “Crime Pays”,” Rau pointed out. “He’s definitely kept up his technical expertise in a way that I certainly haven’t, I’m more interested in the writing end of things. There’s a song on the new record called ‘Marathon Man,’ which is named after the Dustin Hoffman movie. Any time I see a good movie, my brain innately tries to connect it to a song or tries to steal one of the best lines. I’m always looking for things to harvest.”
Questioned about the inspiration behind another song on the album, “Winner’s Circle,” where Rau sings “I’m a piece of shit / it’s a point of pride / I’m the super rich complaining I want more in life,” he’s quick to cop to a less distinguished source.
“I remember I was reading a lot of US Weekly and Star Magazine at the time. When you’re doing something that trashy you at least try to get something out of it [laughs], and in my world that usually means writing a song.”
Bear Hands return Sep. 27 for a show with Foals at the Hollywood Palladium.