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.