Wojtek The Bear

For aspiring musicians, getting featured by the press is a pretty essential factor in ‘making it’ in the business.

While the internet can now offer worldwide coverage, newspaper articles (like this one!) are still highly regarded. And despite discontinuing its weekly printed edition five years ago, the holy grail of music review is still the New Musical Express.

So when Glasgow-based indie act Wojtek The Bear named their third long-player ‘Shaking Hands With The NME’ one might imagine that the double meaning hinted at some level of bitterness. However, frontman Tam Killean insists: “I should be clear from the outset we have no vendetta against the NME!

“The title of the album… is a sort of tongue-in-cheek look at what our career might’ve been like if we’d been around in the ’90s when it felt like there was a lot more money kicking around in the music industry.”

If journalists needed a extra incentive to check out the album, the name of producer Stephen Street will surely stand out, for his work on classic releases by Blur and The Smiths – both darlings of the UK music press.

The result is stripped back at times but gorgeous, thoughtful and assured, with witty wry lyrics (the band describe themselves as “smart casual indie pop” – a better summary than any journalist might manage).

“Stephen was great at nurturing that side of us too – he gave us the confidence to know that often the simplest things are the best,” Killean adds.

The new album follows debut ‘A Talent For Being Unreasonable” in 2018, and 2021’s ‘Heaven By The Back Door’.

There’s another elephant in the room – well, the band’s name. Wojtek was a bear cub rescued by Polish troops in WWII and to provide him with rations, enlisted as a private in the army. After ‘demob,’ he lived out his post-war life in Edinburgh Zoo.

“I randomly stumbled across the story of Wojtek on Wikipedia years ago and just thought it was an amazing story,” Killean says. “I really liked that he had a connection with Scotland too and aside from that, just thought it was a good name for a band!

That’s surely the basis for an article, even online?

“Sadly, despite sending the album to every journalist we know of at the NME, they’ve yet to return our calls (emails!) – but there’s still time!”

This article originally appeared in the Edinburgh News.