TOBIAS

“I’m stumbling out of my house into the river bed,” Tobias sings, embracing earthly delights in lyrics that flow like a stream of consciousness, or a stream itself. Though the threads of Tobias’ past as an experimental producer crafting beats in New York’s underground rap scene are woven throughout the project, Two Birds was their first opportunity to record music with a band and outside producers, allowing Tobias to sharpen their own creative process and focus more deliberately on storytelling and composition. The sounds are warm and expansive; the lyrics are brooding and astute, capturing a youthful sense of wonder and disillusionment. “What’s that thing that makes you a person?” Tobias ponders in the opening line of “Remember,” a cozy acoustic highlight. In moments throughout the album, their concerns are no less than cosmic—while writing, Tobias was fascinated by the double-slit experiment, one of the enduring mysteries of physics. But the music is grounded, a ballad of candor and creativity, generated from what Tobias calls “the worst period of my life.” A spirited follow-up to Thread, Tobias’s 2020 debut, Two Birds announces a singer-songwriter in bloom, reveling in the haunts and thrills of the natural world.