1: Two Gallants - What The Toll Tells

Two Gallants’ What The Toll Tells is a bit of a disappointment to me. The Throes had youthful abandon, with a concentrated focus on story and using popular reference points, (blues, country, folk), in a non-typical way. There was a sense of fun underneath the churning, serious surface of their debut, as if the guys were revelling in recreating their favourite music. But WTTT seems to lack that in some way, songs stretch out past 9 mins in a couple of cases, ideas stretched beyond their worth. All in service of the stories they are telling, I suppose, but that doesn’t really make me want to carry on listening, especially when the instrumentation can be so dour. A more brittle feeling comes from these songs, I guess.

But, I shall persevere with it, give it more time to draw me in and we’ll see how it goes, hopefully I can post some more in depth thoughts in the future.

The Album-A-Week Project info here