Two Gallants - "Waves of Grain". So there's this movement of furious young men who holler country tunes over a thrum and crash of noise. The White Stripes are the band that have brought this most into the mainstream, but others are fishing in the same waters, reeling up fish that are even browner, even bigger, that buck and thrash with even more spirit. There's something tremendously exciting about this genre, to me, and it feels new, like something's changed since the mediocre Pogues-derived punk-irish bands of the 90s. Now there's Sons & Daughters, Uncle John & Whitelock, Jon-Rae and the River, even Okkervil River in bits, licked by the flames of folk, blues and country; hammering against their guitars; shouting poetry into their flimsy microphones.

Two Gallants are from San Francisco, named after a James Joyce story, just a duo on drums and guitar. And the guitarist plays harmonica, too - raised on Bruce Springsteen as well as Johnny Cash, the Violent Femmes alongside Uncle Tupelo. "Las Cruces Jail" is the song that introduced me to them. It's their "Hotel Yorba", their tune for stomping and spitting. Their single. Go find it. But it's "Waves of Grain" that made me sit straight up and resolve to follow everything they do for the next five years. Because this isn't just garage-blues kicks - this is beautiful, fierce, elegiac music, full of longing. It's youth - not childhood, no, just this inbetween time that already feels full of regrets, that's simultaneously full of hopes. Here are kids like me, singing of the noisy days that make you want to rip out your heart and then stuff it right back into your chest, that make you long to be anywhere else and yet right, right here, stars popping gold-and-silver over your head.

"Waves of Grain" is nine and a half minutes but it never repeats itself. It's discovery after discovery, moment after moment. Adam Stephens snarls a poetry that's almost purple, too much!, and yet as he hurls his lyrics at you they hit and hit and hit. He plays his glittering guitar and blows long proud blasts into his harmonica. And the drums, Tyson Vogel's glorious drums! Smashcrashcrashing till you can believe that maybe this rock music means something, maybe it can break something down to smaller pieces, maybe it can help you to be. It's music that makes me wish I was better at writing about music. Maybe I'll try again later.

[What the Toll Tells is due out in February. Buy other stuff at Saddle Creek. Go see them on tour, including Edinburgh on Feb. 5 with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.]