Live—May 21, 2006—Mode Gallery
By Sean Moeller

At the conclusion of any live performance, questions immediately arise. Why did they play that? Why didn’t they play that? Why did they play that one song when they did? Do you suspect they were on drugs? What was with that tool bag bumping into us all night, sloshing our drinks and being the town jack-off? Should we have hit him? Why can I never seem to score a “Where’s The Beef?” T-shirt or a T-shirt of comparable value/pop culture relevance like the merch guy had on? Is it right to be jealous of the merch guy?

You answer the last one first, “Yes, I should be jealous of the merch guy with the ‘Where’s The Beef?’ T-shirt and it has nothing to do with his having won $100 at the casino earlier in the day. I may never in my lifetime have the good fortune of finding one of those shirts popularized by the obviously chain smoker of an old lady in those Wendy’s commercials.” The biggest question that needed answering Sunday night at the Two Gallants/Drakkar Sauna show in this river city was, “Tyson, Adam where on earth was the self-mutilation we were looking for?”

It’s been told that Gallants drummer Tyson Vogel doesn’t leave the stage most nights without two bloody pulps of hands from pounding so hard. Lead singer Adam Stephens isn’t usually as bloody, but a good look at his beaten, gnarled fingertips would make a sharecropper ask him if they stung on him. There was none of the hand slaughter that Gallants fans are privileged to on a near nightly basis Sunday evening. Instead, Stephens and Vogel took a cue from openers (and this week’s dope featured band) Drakkar Sauna, who moved activities into the receiving parlor of the coffeehouse/art gallery. They crammed themselves into the front window, next to the untuned piano and had themselves a somber, lo-fi digression from their regular ways before a good gathering of diehards (some from Rochester, Minn.) and newbies.

Cloaked in hoodies—with the roofs up for most of their entire set—Stephens and Vogel exemplified the calm before the storm. On every other night, the dam would be sure to break, the thunderclaps to scare dogs and cats for miles and the lightning to cleave some trees into halves and threes. But tonight, the calm never even worked itself into a haunting, impending rumble. It just hung in the air like shaky trepidation. Vogel worked with brushes and mild skimming on his minimal kit, barely skimming the tops of his cymbals and snare. Stephens played an acoustic and sang without a microphone, hashing out his marathon story-songs about travel, uncertainties and people troubles. His gritted-teeth poetics and push-pin held mementos from sour days and phantom jail sentences—in a setting such as this one—give credence to the suggestion that this is the guy they should be calling Oberst. He’s wired for fits and tussles and seeing him with so much constraint would be like seeing a shark in an undersized tank or Mr. T putting a Band-Aid on a little child’s knee, using a regular dad-like voice—unnatural and unsettling. These are the situations where trapped animals chew off their legs to get free from the clutches of metal jaws. New song “Lady” and “Steady Rollin’” came back-to-back in a set of epics ballads that had Stephens running from a sheriff’s noose and damning/loving two different ladies named Jane. It was probably the first time in the band’s existence that they could ever say that the fish tank filter was making more noise at times than they were. Intimacy was on overload, but it was a rarity that showed that the Two Gallants can catch that Sunday laziness that ends most viewings of afternoon baseball games in the top of the fourth inning. It was an ideal spoonful of tranquility, similar to the way a Sia record would be good to drain all of the trainwrecking and drinking out of your head on mornings after.

Drakkar Sauna are even more formidable live than they are on their albums, enthralling the witnesses to a two-man band that is more entertainment than a slip and slide that happens to be able to spin quite a delicious tale of clever pessimism and candor. Jeff Stolz puts his left foot through a tambourine, his right foot on his bass drum’s pedal and his hands play guitar. Wallace Cochran is on the other guitar, serving as the ambassador of harmony. Both his and Stolz’ voices go over and under, providing the shadows for each other. Cochran, with his rolled at the corners pirate/Rollie Fingers mustache, told a fictitious story about his fictitious mother that was almost a spoken word breakdown and told us that all of our friends and loved ones were going to die at the hands of bees and if not that, they were damaging their kidneys. We should monitor his drinking, but at this point the screwdrivers weren’t even talking. Really? Really. Seriously? Seriously.