Review of Self Titled Album by Two Gallants

Two Gallants
Two Gallants
Saddle Creek
Album Review

Two Gallants Self Titled Album

Singer-guitarist Adam Stephens and drummer Tyson Vogel make the kind of music people think the Pogues made - melodic, angry folk-punk with a Celtic country tinge. While the live set is something to behold, the band have always worked better when the guitar is quieter - Stephens is a remarkable lyric writer and storyteller ("well if ever i could love myself , then i'll stop loving you") - and this self-titled third disc has their best set of songs, as well as complementary instrumentation: the strings on Trembling of the Rose are perfect. While the other guitar-drummer two-pieces The Black Keys and The White Stripes garner more attention, Two Gallants are steadily putting together an unarguable case for 'underappreciation'.

You'd have to like the White Stripes' angrier earlier albums (or Led Zeppelin's first two full-frontal albums) to get Two Gallants - the attack of both guitar and drums provides quite a battering. The music is as far from pop or Radio 2 as it gets, subverting the genres it hangs its sound around. There's no band that sounds like Two Gallants - it's just as well they do it so well. Album of the week.

4.5/5

Mike Rea


Site - http://www.twogallants.com

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