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It’s never easy breaking up with someone you love. But sometimes stuff just happens and you’ve got to deal with it. Such is the case with this leaky old paddle steamer we like to call bearsuit. Still chuffing and huffing upstream, fighting off cutbacks and a creaky engine against the the tsunami of shitty music. That’s a pretty dire metaphor but you get the idea, campers.

Someone pointed out to me recently that we’ve been going ten years. TEN YEARS, dude! Well we’ve probably been practicing together since about late 1999, early 2000, but we didn’t really start gigging and recording til 2001ish. I think. I can’t even remember. In the early days, bearsuit was Lisa, myself, Matt Moss and a girl called Emma on drums, we were all at school together. We had about three practices and sounded like the Pixies, but the Pixies if they were all incredibly shy and scared of their instruments. Emma would literally hit the drums, and jump at the shock of the noise they made- eeeek! I guess that would’ve been funny to watch if we’d ever made it to a gig. Craig turned up for a few weeks and played a bit of guitar, but then he had to go build Johnny 5-type robots. Emma stayed indoors where the sound of cymbals couldn’t hurt her, but painted beautiful artwork for us instead. That’s her cute ‘muscle belt’ disco design on the new bearsuit t-shirt you’re now wearing. God you’re sexy.

Anyway, we didn’t really get it together properly until after Peel started playing our demos, and that was with the ‘classic’ line up of Lisa, myself, Jan, Matt Hutchings and Cerian. After a while, Matt Moss was off. It was all too twee for him. We put the sound of an ocarina on ‘minerals made me’; he screwed up his face in disgust, went out for a pint of milk and didn’t never come back. He was the first person, other than Lisa, to tell me I could actually write songs. I believed him too, otherwise none of this would’ve happened. Bromley emerged from the shadows, played bass for a few gigs, touched us all, gently, lovingly, in the crotch region, usually without us noticing, or minding, but then slunk back into the darkness. Owen helped out too, although it was embarrassing for us having an actual musician in the band; showed us all up, that sweet, talented bastard. So then Rich came along, decided he’d stay (and recorded some of the best bass and guitar lines I’ve ever heard in any music, ever), cocked his hat, unfolded his loading gear, and made bearsuit his home for a good while. Don’t remember him touching us in the crotch, but there were a lot of blurry moments on that Swedish tour…

And now? I always thought- ‘If this line up ever changes, I can’t conceive making more bearsuit music. It wouldn’t be the same’. Cerian, Matt H and Rich are such an essential part of how we’ve always sounded, for so many years, that it would be impossible to continue without them. Plus, they’re like my best friends, my sisters and brothers. Like a fucking dick I’m actually welling up with tears as I write this, and I’m at work now, so I look like a right old pansy. Brilliant, thanks a bunch, Emotions.

But they just can’t do it anymore.

It became clear last year. We had a few trips to the US, and a fair few gigs that those guys just couldn’t commit to, so we drafted in our friends Charlene and Joe to fill in on bass and drums, which they did brilliantly. But Cerian was pregnant, Matt had to look after her, and Rich and his girl had another baby (Jesus that guy has plucky sperm), and by Christmas 2008, we all realised it just wasn’t going to work anymore. It’s not a band if you can’t play gigs, or spare time to make up and record songs. That’s more like a project, like a hobby. And this has never been a hobby, it’s too important. To us obviously- I doubt you guys could give a fig. Listening to old Iain moaning on again, bloody Nora.

We met and talked about it, in a pub that smelt strongly of gravy, had a little cry, and went off and did Christmassy things. Robbed orphans, took smack, drank in church. The end result is that Cerian and Matt have an adorable new baby, Noah, and Rich and Becky gave Lucy a cute little brother, Charlie (see how the Snoopy gang continually haunt bearsuit’s every move? Good grief).

I went round telling everyone, in a Danny Glover voice- “I’m too old for this shit”. I was ‘retiring’. I didn’t think we could add any more to the glut of music that’s already out there, and no-one would listen anyway even if we did. Plus I missed my bear friends. I still do, although, as with all mutual exes, I still see them all around- Norwich is a small place.

But Lisa, Jan and I can’t stop the rock. We just can’t control our feet. Ten years we’ve been doing this (nearly), and still there’s this constant nagging; either an artistic calling, or some kind of reaction to talcum powder. I still can’t stop writing songs. I’ve really tried. I even buried my guitars under piles of star wars toys and didn’t look at them for ages.

It doesn’t matter how crinkly round the edges we get (although our bottoms remain pert, our bosoms alert and perky, our brows stern and manly, our genitals engorged beyond average sizes), or how few records we sell, or how ‘painfully uncool’ (thanks, artrocker!) we are. Bands who started after us, sold more records and had more photo shoots than us have flared up, recorded a terrible second album, and split acrimoniously. ‘Somehow’, as a great sage once said (me), ‘we’re still alive’.

We’re still more determined than ever to record the best motherfucking album you will ever hear. And put on the most fun shows. And get to sit in a stinky van and travel around and meet new people. We’ll sound different, stranger, more JoeandCharleney. Musically, change is essential. But we’ll stop only when we die.

And even then, when the world is a Mad Max wasteland and we have, like, one arm hanging off and have to butcher other humans for their tasty flesh and the robots hunt us down in the sewers and we build our own laser rifles and blow loads of shit up and stuff… still we will be making up tunes on battery-operated casios and yamahas. Humming optimistic melodies through the gaps in our teeth. Designing seven-inch single covers in rat faeces and radioactive waste. Even during the bloody apocalypse, there’s nothing sweeter, more necessary, than guitar feedback, the throb of a decaying keyboard, and the sound of some losers howling into the night, raging at the dying of the light, because they don’t know what else there is to do.

It’ll be really awesome. See you there? We’ll be the ones in capes.

Love

i and bears xx

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