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Two Gallants are from San Francisco. Their first album, 2004's The
Throes, has just been issued here for the first time. When follow-up What The Toll
Tells is released in January, it will - on the basis of this - be a good day
for music.
Guitar, drums, and a ragged production ethic. There is probably a
precedent for Las Cruces Jail, but it comes less from III Quid and Miss
Penny Farthing than from the punk country of Green On Red, and from
Quentin-era Johnny Cash. A heavy drum sound, and brittle, spiralling
riffs.
With a minute's whistling atmospherics at each end, the single might well
have been designed to thwart radio planners., and I suppose it's hardly
likely to have been played much anyway - but that's a shame, because mystic
ambience bursts into one of the most energetic, vital, catchy songs of the
year. "I spent last night in Las Cruces Jail / Raining hail, born to fail /
Nobody come for to go my bail / Sun, don't you rise no more." This isn't
pastiche and it isn't fashion. Unrealistic though the lyrics may be, there
is a kind of frayed honesty to this, and a real timelessness.
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