Bands with monikers containing the name of an animal of some sort are ten a penny nowadays and it’s becoming hard to obtain any sort of uniqueness. In the case of Straw Bear, their name is taken from a festival in the town of Whittlesey where it celebrates the history of 1900’s Plough Monday to dress one of the confraternity in straw and call him a 'Straw Bear'.  Though none of Straw Bear are from Whittlesey, it is in Straw Bear singers Ian Ray's home county of Cambridgeshire and he calls the Straw Bear festival a “wonderfully bizarre event and it seemed like a good idea at the time (to name the band after it)”.

However, Straw Bear was certainly a name that bugged Ray for while “I went through a patch of hating it – there have been a million bands with ‘bear’ in the name – but a few years ago I was lucky enough to meet Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine at All Tomorrow’s Parties. He’s a big hero of mine, and he said he loved the name of the band, so there was no going back after that.”

The band's name has eventually stuck and gained acceptance.  Straw Bear's formation was one of slow metamorphosis rather than just rapid evolution.

“It started with Chris (Gray) and I working up some songs for fun, and then Tom (Shipp) joined, bringing his considerable technical ability with him. It was around that time that we started to talk, with no small measure of awkwardness, about ‘our band’. We caught the eye of Pas (Struthers), a fantastic drummer who’d I’d watched live for years, and so he joined. Next came Catie (Wicks), who plays guitar and bass and has brought her pretty voice to some of the songs on the new record. All very slow and satisfying … like a nice cup of tea steeping.”

The slow progression of formation has allowed them to gel together over time, getting to know each other’s quirks and strengths.  Ray admits that it has provided Straw Bear with a “really good dynamic, musically.

"I start the songs, and then we finish them together, playing in a room, and the good thing about working together for some time is that I write the songs with plenty of space, knowing that everyone will write a part of their own and send the song off in a totally different direction.”

Straw Bear’s music isn't pigeon holed into any distinct box.

It’s not to say it’s undefinable, but they straddle elements of indie & jangle rock, psychedelic folk all along with liberal lashings of frequently coy and hilarious lyrics. As a band they are working towards releasing album number three, ‘Fiction’, in 2016. In the meantime, if you are new to Straw Bear, take the time and go back to listen to the other two albums. 2012’s ‘Black Bank’ in particular is a buried treasure worth digging out.

Straw Bear are a band never keen to be content just rehashing out another set of songs in the vein of what they previously made. Not that it would be a bad thing if it resembled another ‘Black Bank’ but ultimately you want to see a band progressing. Ray agrees with this and confirms that

“there’s a definite shift in tone from Black Bank. The new album, Fiction, isn’t as acoustic, and has a more muscular and direct sound, for the most part. We worked up most of the songs in pretty short sessions and so everything is more immediate, and maybe a little less ornamented than the last album. I think by a third album you start feeling more comfortable in your own skin and what you’re able to do, so it’s a more confident record.”

Such is the quality of the lyrics in their songs that you’ll often find yourself laughing away at the lines such as on Snobbery or Kitty. However, Ray is humble enough to admit that “lots of the lyrics are shamelessly pilfered from something I’ve read that’s interested me. I know that’s pretentious, but it’s an honest answer.”

Such honesty can be on short supply in the music world. It’s also because when Ray tries to “write simple, direct songs about my own life or experience, they’re always boring or they just make me feel nauseous when I read them back.  Writing about other things gives me the chance to talk things through more obliquely, I think. It’s exactly why the new album’s called Fiction.”

It’s often fascinating to see where the songwriting inspiration can come from. Musicians and songwriters can find it in the most mundane forms and places. To give an idea of what inspires Ray’s lyrics, he elaborated about the first single, All You Need Is An Electric Guitar from the forthcoming album ‘Fiction’.

“It has a slightly overblown lyric about a guitar having these magical, talismanic powers, but I was trying to write something about the way music has propped me up and come to my rescue whenever I’ve been having a difficult time.”

Elsewhere ideas came from literature or from travelling – “There’s another song on the album about what we today might call an ‘emotional infidelity’ between Charles Dickens and a female friend who he believed he was mesmerising out of some kind of emotional breakdown. I read about it in a biography my brother gave me, and I think it’s one of the best things we’ve done. Another song came out of a visit to Venice, where you can see all these withered fingers and locks of hair in glass cases that supposedly once belonged to saints. I’d read something about the illegitimate relic trade, and so the song is all about an ordinary girl who finds herself taken to pieces and sold off by these unscrupulous men.”

Ray asked if that sounded awful, but GoldenPlec can think of much worse lyrical content floating around in the mainstream pop charts. Ray professes an admiration for Sufjan Stevens who is known to channel challenging personal experience into his music.

With the release of a new album and single Straw Bear are in the midst of planning their media coverage. For independent bands such as Straw Bear, this involves a lot of effort and toil without having substantial financial backing for PR and the contacts that go with it.

Ray acknowledges that it’s “very hard to hit the ‘big time’ without some kind of financial backing and the resources to have people on the phone all day championing you. That said, there are plenty of stories of bands who are able to build a huge following on their own terms. When you look at those success stories, you see that every individual in the band has the same work ethic and level of single-minded dedication and commitment to getting the work done … that doesn’t happen very often, and I suppose it rarely happens in combination with amazing musical talent and popular appeal.”

Part of that process involves the tedious task of emailing lots of potentially interested music related sources to see if they are interested. When a band has little financial backing or clout then beggars can’t be choosers in terms of who to contact. It’s a case where Ray “thinks all media matters when you’re trying to build interest in your music.”

Ray laments about the barrier obtaining coverage in traditional print music media as it “seems to be harder to access without professional PR support”. That’s why he and Straw Bear place such emphasis with the online music blogging community as “these people are music fanatics who will listen to everything, will judge each piece of music on its own merits, and are hungry to discover and share anything that excites them. In that sense, I think they’ve taken over the space occupied by the music weeklies when I was growing up.” You only have to witness the decline of the NME and the growing popularity of music websites to confirm that.

The other main thorny music topic tends to be around streaming media such as Spotify/ Deezer and their ilk. For independent bands you have to wonder how much benefit there really is for bands that use these platforms. The exposure versus actually royalties’ divide is disproportionate especially so for up and coming bands.

“We have jobs outside of the band, and so on the face of it, streaming services are just another way to get our music heard. But when our royalty statements come through and you see just how little artists are paid for streams, you realise very quickly that it’s unsustainable for anybody doing it full-time. There’s a real danger that the only music we hear is made by those who can afford to make it. I think that would be everyone’s loss, and you have to admire anyone in the public eye who’s prepared to stick their neck out and challenge that model.”

While it’s difficult to see the actually rewards from streaming media if you're a relatively unknown independent band,  festivals such as The Great Escape offer a platform for bands to get noticed by booking agents and media outlets looking for the next big thing.

Straw Bear have played said festival and Ray agrees that in terms of promoting bands they are essential “playing The Great Escape was one of the high points for the band. Tom Robinson at BBC6Music has been an incredible supporter and picked us for the bill, which elevated our profile and – rightly or wrongly – gave us a big chunk of prestige, which can be hard to achieve when you’re not full-time and living it every single day.

"We’re starting to see the longer-term benefits of that now in that there’s been some interest in our new record … when you go away for a while, it’s hard not to wonder if anyone’s going to give a shit when you come back, so that’s been really good to see.”

The odds are stacked against the majority of bands achieving widespread recognition unless a band as a unique selling point or wads of cash to propel them further. The only hope is that with every gig played and new piece of music made that new fans are made and the word spreads. This has been the case for Straw Bear. It begs the question of what does success for Straw Bear mean to Ian?

“That’s a very good question! Straw Bear started as such a casual thing that even getting some recordings made felt like quite an achievement at the time. Then it was a case of thinking: “It would be nice to do a gig …”, and then “It’d be nice to do a gig in London”, and then “It would be nice to make the next album in a proper studio”. We just wanted a little bit more each time, and so our definition of success shifted with each dolly step. When I look back at our slow and steady growth, it has been a very satisfying experience.

"There was certainly a sense of ‘mission accomplished’ in being played on Radio One in my thirties … but that isn’t to say we don’t want to hear more!”