Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

I'm tired of Springsteen references. So he sang for the "working class", so what? He wasn't the first. What the fuck did you think the blues were? For the rich? Rich people don't got no blues. Not like Robert Johnson and Blind Willie McTell got tha blues. Yes he wrote good rock and roll songs that he put a lot of heart into and wrote songs that the average man could relate to (they call those folk songs). Neil Young sang those types of songs too. You don't hear critics describing Arcade Fire as Young-esque. Maybe because Bruce sang with urgency. A "shit, us middle class people gotta change things, we're working too hard and it's rougher than you think" urgency that no one else could harness because the rest of the music industry was too coked up, listening to Flock of Seagulls, Depeche Mode, and Blondie, while fucking strangers to Prince. Maybe Springsteen was the country music for the liberals (they call that alt-country nowadays). Music for men in Camrys, drinking imported beer, with naturally good looking wives, trying keep their job in a struggling economy. Was it because he was from New Jersey and it sucks to live there? Maybe he had it rough growing up in a middle class neighborhood in Jersey, getting a working class allowance and getting in fights over lunch money, so he resorted to being a loner and playing his guitar. I get it, Springsteen was punk for the suburbs. Kinda like Green Day. So, maybe we should call Billie Joe Armstrong The New Boss? I get it though, Bruce is from Jersey and that's why Titus Andronicus dons that over-used reference, right? I think Springsteen is over-referenced because he made people care about music in a decade overflowing with so much throwaway pop culture. Bruce opened up the box delivered a week after Christmas and with a 9-year-old's energy, dove through the Styrofoam peanuts of songs crowding around him and lifted his present to the sky in triumph for all the world to see. And the next day, he wrote his aunt and uncle a thank you note.
Well, Titus Andronicus detonate that box. Oh, and fuck the thank you note. Patrick Stickles and Company are pissed. They live in the same shithouse state Springsteen lived in, but in a worse economy. Remember that construction job, Bruce? Yeah, there's not even a constructions site. Titus are emo for the working class, because in order to cry about the girl you lost, you actually have to have a girl to begin with, and that means not getting drunk with friends on a weekday. Titus Andronicus have a reputation of wrecking ball-ing into town, sleeping on YOUR couch, drinking YOUR PBRs, and becoming YOUR best friend while doing it. This drunk and sweaty punk-roderie is felt by the time the opening track "A More Perfect Union" ends, and stomps into a paranoid punk rant of "the enemy is everywhere". You are on their side, chanting right along, foaming at the mouth, and pumping your fist like your barely over minimum wage life depends on it. You are a real life punk rocker, not the one who bounces couches and idealizes an anarchist utopia that's not logical and would never exist, but because the man sucks, and it's his fault the economy's in the tank and no matter how hard you work, you might not punch in next Monday.
So, Titus Andronicus spends the 60 minutes of this album working hard for you. Only 2 tracks are under 5 minutes long, none ever seeming labored over, while keeping the punk energy level at 11). Stickles predictably sings about drinking too much and finding a better New Jersey, but does it with such relentless energy, that it sounds refreshingly new. On "Theme From Cheers", he starts off by apologizing to mama cuz him and dad started the weekend boozing early. He's on a mission to put the devil inside him asleep if it takes all night, as long as he and his buddies make it down to the Bottle King by ten. "Four Score and Seven" starts off with a defeated Stickles moaning "this is a war we can't win", and ends in a never-give-up battle cry of "it's us against them" accompanied by a relentless drum roll and a 21 gun salute guitar solo. The band keeps up, carrying his Conor Oberst meets Sid Vicious wailing with an instrumental uprising halfway through each song. Even during the intros when the band is tame, Stickles rage foams like an agitated beer can, waiting for the band to catch up. The one exception being the album splitter "A Pot In Which To Piss". Stickles reflects, almost sweetly at moments for a good minute before admitting "nothing means anything, anymore" against dramatic cymbals. When he claims he's "at the end of [his] rope, and [he] feels like swinging," you expect the band to burst into another fist-pumping finale, they bridge, giving Stickles one more restrained verse before unleashing his full power. The tension swells to bursting, bleeding another verse and a baby grand finale.
The monumental 14 minute closer "The Battle of Hampton Roads" is no exception, with a frothy Oberstian rant that ends in a him begging for his darling to never leave and a bagpipe solo worthy of Aeroplane Over The Sea. The Civil War theme, though having little to do with the actual content of the album, is a fun theme that provides breathing points in this blockbuster album. Under the Lincoln monologues, the harmonicas, and the 2-minute bagpipe solos, this is frustrated Jersey punk that inspires in the only way they know how, by spitting it in your face.

Sleigh Bells - Treats

Great albums almost always have an underlying, unifying theme to the songs. Pink Floyd's psychedelic masterpiece Dark Side Of The Moon is an obvious example. So is Radiohead's ride through dark futuristic soundscapes on Kid A. See Arcade Fire's Funeral for death and the fears, emotions, and unexpected beauty that results from it. Need to train a cyborg army for world domination circa 2095? Battles' Atlas can be your Jock Jams of Terminator-style destruction. While most albums may have a congealing theme, each listener comes away with different emotions and images embedded as a result of hearing them.

Let's take the new Sleigh Bells album Treats for example. The opener Tell 'Em summons a militia of machine gun wielding high school cheerleaders on a vengeful rampage against the football players who raped them. Our soft-singing heroine leads us through a war zone of guitar that grinds, shrieks, and explodes while returning fire with a Gatling gun drum track. The second track starts with that same style buzz-saw guitar, but when the chest rattling beat drops in and our heroine starts to moan along to it, she becomes the ringleader in a sweaty warehouse orgy porno. The former soft-but-assertive battle calls now sound like orders from a whip-wielding dominatrix against the pelvic grind beats. Riot rhythm follows with more singeing guitars and exploding beats, and our heroine is backed by her chanting mob of blood-thirsty cheerleaders. And so the album goes, back and forth between Robert Rodriguez-style battle scenes with sexy blood-stained cheerleaders, to back alley S&M orgy. The violence lets up only once on Rill Rill, a catchy side-to-side head bobber that serves as a much need water (or lube) break before Crown On The Ground, the bombastic highlight on an already "to 11" album. The track seems to only be held together by the sugary sweet serenade of our leading lady. And by serenade I mean her on the beat oh-uh-oh-ohs and sing-song delivery.

It's amazing you can even hear her umidst the chaotic, detonating rhythm section and powertool chords. Alexis Krauss' voice just rides the chaos like a veteran equestrian taming a wild stallion. She is the beautifully soothing counterpart to the mayhem behind her. Replace her with a growling agro male, add a little more guitar and you have a bad hardcore noise band trying to make it in the club scene. Or maybe......

The Walkmen - Stranded

I've been confused lately. I don't know what to think any more about music. I can't decide what's actually good, what's genius, what's annoying. I'm questioning, critisizing, and over analyzing every song I hear. The songs and albums I have grown to love over the past months still sound fine. It's all the new singles. All the chillwave, all the drone noise lofi psychedelic pop that I can't wrap my head around to the point that I just wanna retire. I wanted to check into the retirement home of Top 40 radio where everthing is safe and scheduled. My music meals, hand picked by someone I'll never see, will be bland and boring, but they will provide me with just enough nutrients to get by. Then, like a freedom-loving, inheritance-grubbing nephew the new Walkmen song talked some sense back in me. I needed those horns to wrap their friendly arms around me, take me down to the nearest pub, buy me a drink, "put another dime in the jukebox" and sing and sway along with me and Hamilton Leithauser. My head is clear now and I feel right as rain. I needed those horns, swollen with loneliness. I needed to hear a singer belt out a simple bar ballad about being "stranded and starry-eyed" to keep my feet grounded and eyes to the sky. I've felt stranded, too, over the last week, and now I'm filled with starry-eyed hope again. Thank you Walkmen for your Tom Wait-sy lounge. Thank you for making me feel real again.

Top 10 albums, songs of 2010 so far....

Albums

1. Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
2. LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening
3. Local Natives - Gorilla Manor
4. Black Keys - Brothers
5. Beach House - Teen Dream
6. Sleigh Bells - Treats
7. Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
8. Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot....The Son of Chico Dusty
9. Hot Chip - One Life Stand
10. Fang Island - Fang Island


Songs

1. Titus Andronicus - Four Score and Seven: From the achingly tired and defeated whimper of "this is a war we can't win", to the triumphant never-back-down battle cry of "I was born to die just like a man!", Patrick Stickles and company build a Replacements army of punk that, for 8 and a half minutes, could defeat anything.
2. Black Keys - Next Girl: The Keys finally find that one element of blues garage rock that it took Jack White 3 bands to find: SEX. PS Dan Auberach has the most soulful voice in music right now
3. Big Boi - Shutterbug: A studdering voicebox bassline that will rattle soundsystems like two midgets in the back seat 'rasslin', and Ziploc-fresh flows from half of the most innovative rap group ever.
4. Sleigh Bells - Crown on the Ground: The loudest track to the loudest album of 2010....so far. The single M.I.A. wishes she wrote, off the album she wishes she produced.
5. LCD Soundsystem - I Can Change: James Murphy's disco plea bargain fills the soul with honest inspiration, and the legs with the itch of dance.
6. Best Coast - Boyfriend: Crushes are frustrating even in a summery lofi pop world. 7. Here We Go Magic - Collector: The soundtrack to a couple of 8 year olds running a sugar-high-induced muck through a Wonka-style candy shop.
8. Delorean - Stay Close: A throwback to 90s house that embraces the energy of the genre withou being annoying.
9. Surfer Blood - Floating Vibes: The guitar hasn't sounded this catchy since the Blue Album
10. Hot Chip - I Feel Better: If this would've been released circa 2000, Hot Chip would've been crowned the greatest boyband to never grace the cover of Tiger Beat. The only way they get away with it is that rotten-toothed smirk of British irony.