Eliza And The Bear: It Gets Cold

It’s a refreshing experience to find a band that continue to live up to their early promise. Eliza and the Bear made a big impression with their Upon The North/The Southern Wild double-a-side at the start of this year, and their latest single, It Gets Cold, is at least as good as their past efforts. In fact, it may even be better. Too often bands who kick things off with an instant-sure-fire-smash-hit debut single fade away into the background in less time than it takes for a post about them to be pushed off the front page of a blog feed.

It Gets Cold is more jaunty than its predecessors, but has the same bombastic swagger that made Eliza and the Bear’s earlier songs stand above the rest of the crowd. This track feels a little more ‘produced’, too; the band had already shown a deftness of touch when it came to dynamics and barnstorming thigh-slapping crescendos, and It Gets Cold is a further step along that road. This record is less tweedy, less acoustic than their last one. The textural elements that mark a studio performance as more than a mere recording of a live show hint at a band that’s beginning to push at its boundaries, to test the extremities of their abilities.

So while I think It Gets Cold is an excellent single in isolation, it’s what it signifies that’s really got me excited. Bands that can capitalise on early promise are few and far between, and need to be treasured. It’s still early days for Eliza and the Bear, but by releasing a second 9+ rated single they’ve already marked themselves out as being considerably far ahead of the pack.