Friday 31/03/06 Two Gallants @ Noise Pop, San Francisco

Two Gallants have been on the road for a while now, building up momentum like a landslide coming down a mountain. The result of this landslide comes to a sold out club named Bimbo’s in their native San Francisco tonight. People show up in droves to see the duo; new fans, old fans, and the curious are all in attendance. In fact, there is even a line of people standing in the cold and rainy night hoping to secure spare tickets or vacant spots to the show…of which only a little more than a dozen are able to gain access.

The band come out to a dimly lit, sparse stage amid a roar of cheers and applause. And, after a short introduction stating “It’s good to be home”, they open with an semi-obscure blues cover by Huddie’ ‘Leadbelly’ Ledbetter called 'Mother’s Blues'. A full minute doesn’t pass before this concert starts to look like no other Two Gallant’s show Gigwise has ever been too. Almost immediately, the crowd started swelling with the music and soon began an evening that would include panties being thrown on stage, blues-inspired mosh pits, and yes…even stage diving.

At first, Gigwise thinks the large (for a nightclub) stage of Bimbo’s would seem to loom over to the Two Gallants’ minimalist setup. But, after a few of the duo’s slower songs, it seems to enhance the mood even more. It ends up giving the background an inky blackness that seems to match the mood of many of the band’s darker songs, punctured only here and there by blinding white lights. For most of the evening a single yellow-light halos Adam Stephens as he sings in his trademark whiskey-soaked vocals to the darkened crowd and passionately picks out every note from his guitar. Tyson Vogel is silhouetted around a blur of sticks and cymbals…his hair hanging around his face while he pounds away and sings impassioned, nearly painful backups, like the Messiah on drums.

The next few songs all come from the newly released ‘What the Toll Tells’ and the crowd is ready and waiting for them. They know every word of the songs, barely out in the states for a month, and sing along with an energy that nearly drown out some of the amplified vocals of Stephens and Vogel. At the closing of the show, during the duo’s ‘The Throes’ era tune ‘Nothing to You’, the audience actually do drown out the vocals in the outro of the song. When Stephens sings the line “and it’s down by the riverside”, it is followed immediately by a packed house roaring and chanting “wasting away”, a line usually backed by Vogel.