John Burdick over at HV1 gets to the core of the new album with his fantastic review.
"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. . . Steve Koester doesn’t do anything casually. The last Two Dark Birds record, Songs for the New, was a shimmering work of chamber folk/rock with Baroque eruptions that would come out of nowhere and recede back into Koester’s basal setting of voice and guitar, the default that best suits his high character and expressively craggy singing. Bow is both more Spartan and more tense. With Maxwell, Koester has crafted a narrative and sonic environment in which anything can happen; but this time out, things are snakier and darker. The foreign elements and non-folk sounds slink in and do their work – exotic lines, queasy ether and sometimes comically incongruous sound events – and slink out. They don’t always mean you well. The album moves ever-so-imperceptibly from dark to light, and becomes more and more Catskills as it goes."
Read the FULL REVIEW >