Two Gallants have always been partial to a bit of caterwauling. Their music, whether at the country-punk or bare-bones Americana ends of their spectrum, possesses an abrasive quality, a sense that as it pours out it’s doing some damage to the duo.
Three years ago, ‘The Bloom And The Blight’ bulked out Adam Stephens’ guitar and gave Tyson Vogel freedom to hit as hard as possible. Some of that heft has been carried over into album five, but this time it props up songs that sound even more exhausted than usual.
‘We Are Undone’ is a record beset by outside pressures, whether that’s the continuing gentrification of their hometown, San Francisco, the mercury rising in the world’s thermometer or the distance between what could have been and what ended up as reality. Their lifestyle - artists in a world bound together by dollar signs - is under attack.
Where the title track jabs with a characteristically sharp riff and symbiotic drums, My Man Go is a wistful lament of similar scope to the epic Some Slender Rest. Here, Stephens looks inward and finds wrong turns aplenty: “Close my eyes. See my life as it could have been.”
There is a sense throughout of rolling towards an inevitable end, one that we are powerless - or perhaps not aware enough - to avoid. On the album’s standout track, Incidental, roadblocks both internal and external pop up in the lyrics, only to be shunted aside by its relentless drive.
The world that ‘We Are Undone’ inhabits is one of helplessness and last gasp recrimination. You might not see their side of things at every crossroads, but, as ever, Two Gallants' way with a melody will force you to hear them out.
Two Gallants Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Thu February 19 2015 - DUBLIN Workmans Club
Fri February 20 2015 - MANCHESTER Gorilla
Sat February 21 2015 - GLASGOW Stereo
Mon February 23 2015 - LEEDS Brudenell Social Club
Tue February 24 2015 - BRISTOL Thekla
Wed February 25 2015 - LONDON Islington Assembly Hall
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