We first wrote about Two Meters, the recording project of Florida’s Tyler Costolo last year when we shared his self-titled debut album, released on Very Jazzed. Costolo “achieves what at first appears a paradoxical hybrid,” we wrote. “Blending the sincere intimacy of bedroom pop with the urgent weight of ambient into what are either condensed epics or impossibly rich snapshots.”
Next came the Blue Jay EP, which “further blur[red] the dividing lines between pop, post-rock and ambient, conjuring a sound that manage[d] to make personal experiences appear vast and weighed with meaning.” The release felt like the Two Meters aesthetic being honed, another step toward realising Costolo’s singular vision that built upon the intimate and emotional style of his debut.
Continuing this development, Two Meters is back with a brand new A/B single, The Nightmare // Bike Ride, again released with Very Jazzed. Produced by Paul Kintzing of German Error Message, the songs find Costolo pushing into dark and foreboding territories. ‘The Nightmare’ opens with a palpable sense of trepidation that calls to mind Jason Molina‘s starkest work. “Alone gasping for air,” Costolo murmurs, “against the weight of the world,” and this weight is soon given tangible form in the shape of thundering guitars.
Indeed, the entirety of the lyrics could be taken as a verbalised summation of what is the heaviest and bleakest Two Meters song to date.
Crushing down as shadows move
Faceless but with form
A mouth unable to cry out
As the darkness comes
Just as fast life snaps back
The figure gone
The room is back in view
What was real is never clear
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The heaviest and bleakest, that is, until ‘Bike Ride’ swings into view. Forming out of the static aftermath of the previous track, the song finds a callous rhythm amid the reverb, dragging its great heft forward with a terrible inevitability. “There’s a nail in my wheel,” Costolo wails, his voice half-crazed through the noise. “My pedals are broken / Left to grind / Into my heel.”
In some ways the track serves as an interesting counterpoint to another bicycle-themed track from this year. Pedro The Lion‘s ‘Yellow Bike’ is similarly nostalgic, looking back at what once was, but while Bazan finds something like fondness, gazing at past concerns in the knowledge that he outlasted their threat, Costolo’s discovery is far less comforting. Here the retrospection is far more immediate, the danger still present and waiting. If the closing moments of the track see the nightmare break, then there is still no promise that it cannot return. Maybe the next night, or the night after that, or every night of your life, picking at the wounds it inflicts so that they may never quite heal.
My helmets collecting dust
The brakes are out
I am
Crossing the streetI make it to the other side
But look back and wonder
What could have been
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The Nightmare // Bike Ride is out now via Very Jazzed and you can get it from the Two Meters Bandcamp page.
