Bearings

Over the last decade, BEARINGS have been in near-constant motion. Since the release of their 2017 debut EP, Nothing Here Is Permanent, the Ottawa-formed pop-rock quartet have barely slowed down, releasing a trio of beloved albums for Pure Noise – Blue in the Dark (2018), Hello, It’s You (2020) and The Best Part About Being Human (2023) – and touring the world with the likes of Neck Deep, State Champs, Less Than Jake and Set It Off, connecting with audiences through every crystalline melody, buoyant bounce and fervent tempo spike.
But all this movement comes with its own weight. On their fourth full-length, COMFORT COMPANY, Bearings turn that forward motion inward, exploring what it means to grow older in a world that never seems to stop spinning. It’s an album informed by long stretches of late-night highway drives, cramped green rooms and quiet moments in between heartbeat-racing live sets, when the adrenaline fades and life’s questions creep in.
“A lot of the lyrics on the record are about being unsure of where you’re at, wanting to maybe move on to something else,” vocalist Dougie Cousins says. “Maybe it’s a full-time job, maybe it’s the next step in life or an actual change of scenery. Metaphorically, it just felt like the catalyst for looking ahead to something else.”
Across the album’s 10 songs, those uncertainties resonate just as loudly with the band – Cousins, guitarist Ryan Culligan, bassist Collin Hanes, and drummer Mike McKerracher – as they’re sure to with listeners navigating their own shifting sense of purpose, place and identity.
That sense of reflection isn’t just lyrical; it shaped how Comfort Company was made. The band decamped to Room 21 in Toronto – the very same studio where they made Nothing Here Is Permanent and Blue in the Dark – to record the album with producer Kyle Marchant (Silverstein, nothing,nowhere.), who assisted on those early sessions. Returning to the familiar studio space marked a full-circle moment for the band, a rare pause to take stock of just how much has changed over the last decade and to reconnect with the spirit that first brought them together.
“On the last album, we really wanted to hone in on a consistent pop-punk sound through the record,” Culligan explains. “We wanted to carry that over on this one but also bring a bit more rawness back into things and not have as many synths or extra sounds. Let’s have the four of us just play our instruments and be Bearings again.”
True to their word, Comfort Company captures the spirit of the band’s unspoken musical chemistry: The ferocity of the album-opening title track yearns for the Warped Tour parking lot days of old, while first single “Quick Release” rides droning vocals and guitars into a classic pop-punk earworm chorus that nonetheless pushes their sonic guardrails out in exciting new ways. Elsewhere, State Champs vocalist Derek DiScanio dips in for a cameo on the hi-hat-and-bass-heavy “Float Away;” the loud-soft dynamism of “Freaking Me Out” channels the tension of intrusive thoughts and existentialism; “Feel Less” grapples with the dulling of once-vibrant emotions (“It don’t hit the same/As I’m getting older/Is it a calming feeling/To feel nothing at all?”); and “Let Me Hate Myself” finds Cousins, Culligan and Hanes all sharing ascending vocal lines in an album-closing culmination.
It all blends to serve as perhaps the most honest representation of Bearings to date. Now a four-piece (with Cousins set to handle rhythm guitar on tour), they’ve faced the unknown – both individually and collectively as a group – head-on and emerged with a clearer sense of where they’re meant to be. What’s kept them going is ultimately the same thing that sustained them from day one: the songs themselves, as well as the people who’ve taken them to heart – the audiences screaming every word back, night after night, who’ve become a reminder of just how worth it all still is.
The process of making Comfort Company only reinforced what the band has long suspected: They’re built for the road, for the movement, for the next show and the one after that. Perpetual motion isn’t just a theme, it’s a calling – and if history is any indicator, it’ll bring Bearings to a city near you before long. ##