Album: Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
Bombastic. That’s the word here on The Monitor, the second full-length album from new New Jersey group Titus Andronicus. Some punk attitude, some southern rock riffs, some Conor Oberst style vocals, and some very high concepts jangle and crash at once on this album, named for the famous ship of the American Civil War, the USS Monitor. In fact, that great concept forms the backdrop for a rollicking kick through strife and self-doubt.
We open with quite a charge. “A More Perfect Union” ramps quickly from stirring narration to Patrick Stickles’s gruff and exasperated declarations. Over a driving one-two sort of a beat and classic slow-driving guitar licks, what strikes first is the youth of it all. They recall the Sex Pistols perhaps in punk attitude and national pageantry, only the feet being held to the fire are on the other side of the Atlantic. Most of the production is spacious and light, lending a bit of honky-tonk to the whole affair, while the vocals usually hang back a little and let the music take focus. Although, Stickles leans on the technique of taking a big breath before the last word of a bar, landing each line with punchy force. The lyrics swing hither and yon from obvious Civil War concepts to the angst and frustration that seem to come from being young in New Jersey. They don’t just wear their ambition on their sleeves, they send it out ahead as a warning. They don’t let up over the next few tracks, releasing an absurd joy with grandiloquent-sounding chants like, “Rally around the flag,” “The enemy is everywhere,” and “you will always be a loser.” Then, as the pace breaks for a bit on “A Pot in Which to Piss,” we march a little closer to modern America.
Bourgeois malaise has taken blows far more severe and far crueler as far back as our continental music reaches. What Titus Andronicus has captured here though, is the new frustration of an age that wants the best of every world. They don’t want to or can’t abandon their traditions and cultural trappings, but punk is a part of that heritage. Neither can they shake its classic call to smash up the expectations heaped on them by those traditions. From this duality we get something that isn’t quite a rebellious revolution, not quite the total abandon of hedonism, and not even quite the cry for help of an Emo suicide. What The Monitor offers instead is simple acknowledgment. Acknowledgement of said forces and a very modern indecisiveness. The real genius here, in the end, is the point at which they turn a very real American bravado inward, on very personal doubts and inadequacies. Like escaping a Chinese finger trap, they finally find release by relinquishing to a sort of relaxed abandon. They haven’t given up. They’ve given in, as hard as they know how.
This force forges an album that spends a fair share of its sixty-six minutes on seamless transitions, head-thumping choruses, and buildups to head-thumping choruses. It’s all mixed within established rations of the concept album, complete with long segues and voiceover clips passed through some old-timey filters. Too much? On paper. So what saves it?
The Monitor is just so damned catchy and FUN. It’s the first album in a while I’ve had to restart immediately after I finished it. It’s like they’ve found glee in settling, in simply throwing up arms and singing. Not since 2006’s Arctic Monkeys debut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not have I had such excitement over such a promising young band. I could have chosen any of several albums I’ve really liked over the last year or two about which to write. Here though, I’ve found a manifesto with the ambition and forward drive of American Idiot, the personal and self-deprecating lyrics of Johnny Cash, and plenty of rally cries that could be at home in a crowded Irish pub. Hell, they even throw in a few references to that New Jersey musical icon, the Boss-it’s that kind of Americana, and I think this year I’ll be playing The Monitor and grilling out, while streams of color ignite over Mt. Rushmore.