Chronicle Review

There’s a line on the new Billy & Dolly album that sums up everything you need to know about the San Francisco power-pop duo: “You had a sister, I look just like her,” sings Bill Rousseau on the song “Now I See.” It’s funny, unexpected and probably brutally candid, kind of like the rest of the group’s beautifully produced second album, “Dally Bon Idyll.” With his musical partner Dahlia Gallin Ramirez – both former members of the band the Monolith – Rousseau lends his surprisingly high-pitched voice and bubblegum melodies to tangible heartache throughout the record. There’s an air of latter-period Teenage Fanclub in the mournful breeziness of songs such as “Oh Yeah” and “Old Ghost,” while “Young and on the Way Up” quivers and shakes like something you might hear a thousand times at Johnny Rockets. The bittersweet pleasures these two create are solitary.

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