BIO
Photo by Sam Erickson
ABOUT TWO DARK BIRDS
Two Dark Birds is a band from the Catskill Mountains led by songwriter Steve Koester and drummer Jason Mills. They are joined by Josh Roy Brown (lap steel), Tyler Wood (keys), Iris Koester (vocals) and Mark Lerner (bass). Since 2008, they have released four critically acclaimed albums, as well as the 2022 EP Porous. Their fifth album Dreamers of the Golden Dream (Vol. 1) was released February 27th on Vfib Records.
ABOUT STEVE KOESTER
Prior to Two Dark Birds, Koester also fronted the bands Maplewood, Koester and Punchdrunk, who altogether released eleven critically-acclaimed albums and toured extensively throughout the US and Europe. The music has been called "knockout gorgeous" and "timeless. . . great rock music" and has received glowing reviews everywhere from Fader and Nylon to The Village Voice and The NY Times, showing up on year-end "Best" lists in Magnet, Popmatters, Rhapsody, Disclaimer and more. Koester has also written, recorded and produced a wide variety of songs for film and TV, including features in Sideny Lumet’s “Before the Devil Knows Your Dead” and Laurie Collyer’s “Sherrybaby.”
PRAISE FOR TWO DARK BIRDS
“This is big-feeling, open-hearted music that meets the current chaos head-on, and sings anyway.” - Add to Wantlist
"... exhilarating, questioning, and wide awake in everything it pursues." - Mystic Sons
"Remember when rock music had no problem being this funky? This easily accessible and instantly infectious? When groove and grace were defining properties rather than volume and velocity, which now seems to be the norm? When soul and rock were brothers in musical arms? Remember all that? Two Dark Birds certainly does." - The Big Takeover
“…in the tradition of musician-auteurs from Scott Walker to Bob Seger via Leonard Cohen and beyond. Instead of appealing to trends, it aims to leave a lasting impression; it doesn’t demand your attention, but it sure does deserve it.” - Analogue Trash
“Bow, the latest luminous and ambitious collection of poet-grade and quietly experimental folk music written by Steve Koester and performed by his loose assemblage of Catskill cronies.” - HV1
“…poised, structured, self-aware, ambitious.” - DVEIGHT
"...there certainly is a magic to it, a kind of backwoods witchery that the only the best of the style can really capture. " - Culture Collide
“…brimming with pastoral energy and light. There's a quiet dignity to the songs, no grand or elaborate veneering.” - Chronogram
“Strange and beautiful… It’s a record heard best with a beer in hand beneath a star-punched sky.“ Nylon
“…one of this year’s most subdued and moving releases.“ The Big Takeover
“Koester takes on the populist challenge of the form: how to be at once folk-accessible and lit-deep, how to wed image to experience and emotion without ever getting too fine or too poetic for the idiom. Koester hits the mark again and again…” Woodstock Times
“Steve Koester is a folk singer whose darknesses and frailty are worn on his sleeve, the kind of sorcery you get from living a life in old mountains like the Catskills. He’s got a beautiful album out called Songs for the New.” yvynyl
“…a masterful soundtrack to self-reflection.“ Men’s Vogue