Under Starling's "Bird Watching" captures the soul of Ireland's coastline

In "Bird Watching," the latest single from Irish alt-rock outfit Under Starling, they reveal a softer, airier side to their musical territory – one that's akin to whisking their listener away and resting them gently upon the windswept cliffs of southeast Ireland. Having built up a steady head of steam since forming in 2023 and turning heads with their debut album, Murmurations, the band returns with this track that feels less like a song and more like a moment in time.

"Bird Watching" rises gently up into a choral intimacy: a brittle intertwining of Vos's vocal with guest Molly Robb that hauntingly parallels the song's coastal ennui. There's a slowness here, an emotional easing that invites you to lean in. "Bird Watching" is an invitation to slow down, to deep-breathe, to look around. It's what we experience when we open ourselves to look and listen. Beneath Starling is not just putting out music, but they're constructing emotional shelters, one song at a time. With "Bird Watching," they've handed us a quiet triumph, a song that doesn't need your attention but earns it through grace, patience, and beauty.

But Under Starling have always worn their influences well, and "Bird Watching" comes with the emotional sweep of the Cranberries, the expansive layering of the War on Drugs, and that uniquely Irish ache that evokes the introspective peaks of early U2. But this is not imitation, this is inheritance, reimagined. They are molding a sound that pays tribute to their foundation while crafting something that is uniquely their own.

"Bird Watching" has a cinematic quality to it, the type of thing you picture playing while waves break under a grey sky, or while ruminating on a long coastal drive. It's atmospheric, but never empty. Every note is deliberate, every harmony sounds essential. The voices of Danny and Molly interlock like seabirds in midflight, sometimes passing, flying in perfect formation.