Two Gallants

Not long ago, Two Gallants was poised to be the next it band — lauded by the press for electrically lo-fi live performances and a debut full-length, 2004’s The Throes, that even Pitchfork and Vice couldn’t entirely dog with mean-spirited puns. A couple years later, with a few dozen tours and a new release on the notoriously sad-boy-cool Saddle Creek imprint behind them, Two Gallants is still teetering on folk-rock greatness. What the Toll Tells takes the San Francisco-based duo of guitarist/harpist/vocalist Adam Stephens and drummer/vocalist Tyson Vogel through the familiar backwoods country of Bob Dylan-esque acoustics, but with the punky, defiant attitude of purebred city boys. Like building a log cabin in the middle of a metropolis, it’s a weirdly awesome contradiction that doesn’t need to make sense. Emotion runs deep on Toll, with songs that meet somewhere between the iodine-stung scraped knee of youthful rebellion and the heavy heartache that comes with the encroaching burden of adulthood.