But if the night had a knife wound...

You know who is motherfucking great?

Two Gallants.

I don't know what alt-country is, but that's the term I think of when I hear these guys. It's a guitarist/vocalist and a drummer. Sparse as it gets, but the songwriter for the group (whomever it may be) is one of the best songwriters of this generation. I pray to god that sometime in the future (if there is a future, keep your fingers crossed for a nice 2012 armageddon!) there are college classes dissecting the lyrics to What The Toll Tells alone. And I say that as someone who rarely pays attention to any lyrics, as they generally all sound like they were torn from a Jr. High student's Mead Composition notebook. The lyrics/songwriting are that fucking good, they can make an old hater like me pay attention.

The fact that I don't know who is in this band or who writes the songs is not borne of ignorance, I would like to add. The problem is that these days, doing any research into a band is bound to disappoint you. You hear a new band that you love, they're hitting all the right emotional notes and you think you've just found the saviors of rock 'n' roll/hip-hop/atonal new-jazz/what-have-you.. and then you check out their myspace page. Turns out it's just a group of super-fruity dorks who are doing the whole goddamn thing as a joke. Or they don't believe in what they do as fervently as you do. Or whatever.

Now, I don't mean to say I think Two Gallants are lightweight or doing it for the sake of douchery. You can't be this good and not understand what the fuck time it is. But that is the case for too many goddamn bands these days. Even when I'm writing reviews for bands, I am loathe to check out anything about the band beyond what professional courtesy dictates. Especially if I like them.

That's why I am a huge fan of the collapse of the record industry. Not because I am against people making money, mind you, but because I hope that once the millions of dollars are off the table, the people who see making a demo as an investment in future Cribs appearances will move on to acting or prostitution or whatever the fuck the next big industry is and leave my fucking music alone. I'd like to see a music world where even if you suck ass, you at least believe in what you're doing, and you're not sucking ass because you're gunning for a huge paycheck (we're looking at you, Smashmouth).

And, really, fuck making millions from acting - or sports - while we're at it. I was watching the world baseball tournament on a break at work recently when the color commentator mentioned that the players from the Dutch team had to ask for extra days off of work so they could continue on in the series. That's right, professional baseball players for a national team have day jobs. That made me seriously happy in my heart. Because you shouldn't make millions of dollars a year based on your ability to knock a fucking ball around a lawn. The same way you shouldn't make millions of dollars a year to pretend to be another person, or because you can strum a couple of chords on a six-string.

Don't get me wrong. I love sports, albeit I love playing them and not watching them. I love movies. And I fucking love music. I'm a musician myself, and I sure as fucking shit don't play because I hope it will get me a platinum bathtub someday. I play because that's what I do. The same way a real actor would be doing $5 matinees at a community theater if the movie industry collapsed. The same way a real athlete would be playing on a loosely organized against other loosely organized teams on the weekends if the professional sports system was the latest victim of the latest recession. Or the same way real writers are just doing it for free on blogs in their spare time, now that the print industry has collapsed.

But back to my original point: Two Gallants. Check 'em out. Now. Your ears deserve it.