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Two Gallants traveled thousands of miles, across counties and continents, to
make what the toll tells. Their sophomore album swells with the kind of worldweary
storytelling and musical dexterity that arises from travel, loss, and triumph
coupled with an unusual affection for literature and legend. But it all starts and
ends with their home, the city streets of San Francisco.
Adam Stephens and Tyson Vogel have been friends since the first grade. Their
earliest gigs were on Mission street corners, a fresh-faced band earning an audience
in front of the 16th Street BART station. They’re both still on the sunny side
of their 20s, but know there’s a badge more telling than age. So they continue
to draw their path with humility and brandish music like a beacon.
It’s a style that allows for little flourish, where every element has stark purpose:
two voices, guitars, drums, and a harmonica. Overdubs and guest musicians are
kept to an effective minimum. With that lean arrangement, Two Gallants reveal
a thousand tales, a dizzying timelessness, and a potent range of emotions.
Once they took to the road, Adam and Tyson found instant grass-roots rapport
with fans across the U.S., and word spread quickly. In short time, they went from
hand-to-handing their homemade CDRs to national distribution of their
acclaimed Alive Records debut, The Throes. Not surprisingly, England also took
notice: NME lauded their breakout performance at last year’s SXSW, while
London’s Rough Trade record store declared The Throes the first great album
of 2005 and recently included it in their top 20 albums of the year. Their initial
flirtation with British audiences came in front of 2005’s Reading & Leeds festivals.
Now signed to Omaha’s Saddle Creek on the strength of their debut and riveting
live show, Two Gallants present what the toll tells, to be released in
February 2006 in America and Europe. The album was recorded on 2-inch tape
at San Francisco’s Tiny Telephone studios by Scott Solter (Spoon, Mountain
Goats, John Vanderslice) and steps up with a greater sense of hurt and humor,
and more melody and racket than their previous work. The almost casually insistent
hooks, observational songwriting, and tangled interplay remain, but here
emerge with a deeper musicianship and broader scope.
While the epic lament of “waves of grain” waltzes like slow heartbreak beyond
the nine-minute mark, “16th st. dozens,” one of the first songs written by the
band, unloads in a quick, blitzkrieg fury. Adam narrates the first-person account
of an outlaw at the gallows in “las cruces jail,” the record’s country-punk first single,
and unspools a gorgeous paean to city strife in “age of assassins.” Tyson
might be the Cassius Clay of drumming, dropping crescendo blows on the venomous
“long summer day” and nimbly jabbing through the album’s crux -- the
boozy, rapturous fan favorite “steady rollin’.”
The boxing metaphor is apt -- there’s opposition and cooperation, beauty and
violence, when this duo steps into the ring. what the toll tellsdemands patience
and an emotional commitment. It rewards with understanding and a renewed
faith in so-called folk music; that is, music made by folks.
These folks, Two Gallants, have had each other for years. With what the toll
tells, they give a little of themselves to us.
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