Far removed from the scrappy tunes Koester was cranking out back in the late ’90s with local post-punk quartet Punchdrunk, Two Dark Birds is soulful, smooth and buttery. It’s the kind of record I would have anticipated Koester making if he had picked up stakes for Laurel Canyon, not Brooklyn. Admittedly taking its cues from such heavily baked country-rock classics as Neil Young’s On the Beach, the album flows nicely , with plenty of languid sun stroked tunes like “Blown,”  while leaving room for the occassional dark dirge workhorse like “Pernod Blues” (which features a fractured guitar solo whose minimalist genius has Young’s influence written all over it).
 
Throughout Koester’s cracked cigarette-stained croon serves as the ideal launching pad for a range of tales encompassing topics both large and small: the joys and perils of getting wasted (“Blown,” “Cut Down to Size”), romantic entanglements both good (“When I Sleep I Dream of You”) and bad (“Great Plains”). The ragged charm of Koester’s voice and his embattled lyrical protagonists provide a nice anchor for the band’s loose limbed bounce which features plenty of sparkling keys and boozy pedal steel runs.
The most compelling tune is “My Mother The Stereo” a fine addition to the canon of songs in which the songwriters ponders, “Has my devotion to rock music ruined my life?” Koester treats the question with the wry wisdom befitting a grizzled indie music veteran (“How’d I end up in this house of transgression?/This ain’t a mansion with a pretty pension/It’s just a pg pen for messed up mansions, my dear/How’d I get from there to here?/Umbilical cord headphone cord guitar chord/My music in utero/My mother the stereo/Was that the place that this whole thing started?”)
 
An understated beauty that holds up well to repeated listens, Two Dark Birds can take its place alongside the best of Koester’s work both in group settings (he’s one third of the stellar songwriting team driving NYC Canyon-rock purveyors Maplewood , recently featured prominently on the soundtrack to Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows Your Dead) and solo, not to mention similarly influenced records I’ve heard in the last few years by higher profile acts.
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Far removed from the scrappy tunes Koester was cranking out back in the late ’90s with local post-punk quartet Punchdrunk, Two Dark Birds is soulful, smooth and buttery. It’s the kind of record I would have anticipated Koester making if he had picked up stakes for Laurel Canyon, not Brooklyn. Admittedly taking its cues from such heavily baked country-rock classics as Neil Young’s On the Beach, the album flows nicely , with plenty of languid sun stroked tunes like “Blown,”  while leaving room for the occassional dark dirge workhorse like “Pernod Blues” (which features a fractured guitar solo whose minimalist genius has Young’s influence written all over it).
 
Throughout Koester’s cracked cigarette-stained croon serves as the ideal launching pad for a range of tales encompassing topics both large and small: the joys and perils of getting wasted (“Blown,” “Cut Down to Size”), romantic entanglements both good (“When I Sleep I Dream of You”) and bad (“Great Plains”). The ragged charm of Koester’s voice and his embattled lyrical protagonists provide a nice anchor for the band’s loose limbed bounce which features plenty of sparkling keys and boozy pedal steel runs.
The most compelling tune is “My Mother The Stereo” a fine addition to the canon of songs in which the songwriters ponders, “Has my devotion to rock music ruined my life?” Koester treats the question with the wry wisdom befitting a grizzled indie music veteran (“How’d I end up in this house of transgression?/This ain’t a mansion with a pretty pension/It’s just a pg pen for messed up mansions, my dear/How’d I get from there to here?/Umbilical cord headphone cord guitar chord/My music in utero/My mother the stereo/Was that the place that this whole thing started?”)
 
An understated beauty that holds up well to repeated listens, Two Dark Birds can take its place alongside the best of Koester’s work both in group settings (he’s one third of the stellar songwriting team driving NYC Canyon-rock purveyors Maplewood , recently featured prominently on the soundtrack to Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows Your Dead) and solo, not to mention similarly influenced records I’ve heard in the last few years by higher profile acts.
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Enen though one would not think that a couple in their late 60s could enjoy this CD, we submitt just the opposite. It is a complete delight and we keep it on our car CD player all the time. Let's have more. We bought 2 for our kids.
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In the very keen Maplewood, Steve Koester helps conjure the mistral singer-songwriter winds of Gordon Lightfoot, America and other soft rock gold. In Two Dark Birds he throws the net warmly wider. While Rust Never Sleeps, it's clearly passed out on his couch a time or two, and this group also invites Thurston Moore, The Platters and Dennis Wilson to the slumber party. Songs move with poetic jumps while the music simmers on a low heat that bubbles from time to time with electric bark and slide wistfulness. There's the electric piano teardrop of "The Second Kingdom" and the impossible to pin down sulk of "Pernod Blues." Everywhere Koester decorates the inviting sonics with lines about Easter morning flowers, buzzards and headphone umbilical cords. Cut by cut, it's mix tape silver and gold, and taken as a whole it's a new friend ready to wrap your ears in good things.
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