“I’ve got to empower myself before I devour myself”

Falling Awake Debuts at Syntax Physic Opera

Bears With Eagle Arms’ first full-length album is about how difficult it is to find yourself and the people who take advantage of that journey. It’s about cults and religion and hindsight and the distractions along the way. Falling Awake is about how the self-help industry is a scam and how all help is self help. Falling Awake is about my 20’s.

Falling Awake debuts at Syntax Physic Opera on Saturday, June 15th. Listen to the full album below.

Bears With Eagle Arms started as a bedroom project. I was never satisfied with the music I wrote with groups. It always came out too diffuse, too unfocused, too averaged. This project was meant to unlock my own sound in all my strange glory. The first thing that came out was Bears With Eagle Arms, an impressionistic song that joined the low growling of bearness with the soaring falsetto of eagleness. Since then I’ve had collaborators come and go, songs arranged and rearranged, and relationships with incredibly talented musicians that pushed me far beyond my expectations. But in the end, it’s still about me and my journey to find my authentic voice.

Falling Awake isn’t quite a concept album—it’s a collection of fully-realized, independent thoughts—but it does tell a story. The core of the sound is a four-piece folk band built around honest, poetic writing. The arrangements are inspired by the playful orchestration of baroque-pop bands. The result is somewhere between the Decemberists and Donovan: weighty but whimsical, grounded but grandiose.

Join me at Syntax Physic Opera for our first performance of Falling Awake where I, Peter McGuire, will finally reveal the secrets of self-realization. I will teach you to see yourself, see the true value of clams and see through any limitations that might be holding you back. I can’t guarantee it will be elucidating but I can promise it will be entertaining.