Out today, the 6th of February, ‘Girl Of Summer’ is the latest release from Two Dark Birds, and comes ahead of their upcoming album, ‘Dreamers Of The Golden Dream (Vol. 1)’, which is set for release on the 27th of February, through Vfib Recordings.
Hailing from the Catskill Mountains in South Eastern New York, Two Dark Birds is led by songwriter Steve Koester and drummer Jason Mills, and accompanied by Josh Roy Brown on lap steel, keyboards from Tyler Wood, Iris Koester on vocals, and bass from Mark Lerner.
Prolific artists, ‘Dreamers Of The Golden Dream (Vol. 1)’ will be their fifth album released since 2008. Their debut EP, ‘Porous’, was released in 2002.
Opening with guitar and a sombre bass, ‘Girl Of Summer’ soon expands to all the instruments, the drums in perfect time with Koester’s mellow vocals. Sonically, it harks back at times to the likes of Bowie (there’s a part that sounds very much like his soliloquy in ‘Under Pressure’, while later on there’s a piece that is reminiscent of ‘Sound And Vision’) while lyrically it pays homage to artists such as Elton John, The Beatles, John Mellencamp, The Beach Boys, and so on (even the title references the Bryan Adams song, ‘Summer of ’69’ – or is it Aerosmith’s ‘Girls Of Summer’? Why not both?). Suffice to say, it’s both very cleverly written and composed.
‘Girl Of Summer’ itself is caught somewhere between melancholy and nostalgia, the singer going back over their memories of the girl they’d once known; on second inspection it’s possible that the “girl of summer” is actually the subject of all the songs they’d grown up listening to the radio.” “Goodbye Hello Goodbye” is on the surface a reference to The Beatles, but is it perhaps, on a deeper level, a despondent cry at the loss of radio’s role – video may have killed the radio star, but social media and streaming have certainly ensured it’s not going to rise once more from the dead.
Find out more about Two Dark Birds and their music online on their official  website, Facebook, and Instagram. Stream ‘Girl Of Summer’ here.
