New Jersey's Titus Andronicus' debut album "The Airing of Grievances" was the best bit of ramshackle, heart on the sleeve, basement-punk since the Replacement's "Tim." Mixing the righteous fire of the Clash, the loser piss-drunk heartland noise of the 'Mats and a dash of Celtic punk ala the Pogues, Titus Andronicus threatened to be one of those bands that really matters. So expectations are fairly high for "The Monitor," the band's sophomore followup.
Musicians typically do one of three things on their sophomore release; a) deliver more of the same, b) expand their sound every so slightly without upsetting their basic template, or c) overambitiously veer off into a new direction entirely. For their sophomore record, Titus Andronicus choose a little bit from column b and a lot from column c.
The album kicks off with "A More Perfect Union," which boasts the line "tramps like us, baby we were born to die." Lead singer Patrick Stickles' invocation of the Boss is more than a little prescient, since the fellow Jerseyite's influence runs throughout "The Monitor" as much, or more so, than any other. Later in the album Stickles declares "I'm destroying everything that wouldn't make me more like Bruce Springsteen." Unfortunately, epic "Thunder Road"-sized songs are not really what these guys do best. That doesn't stymie the band's ambition. Hell, even the album title is ambitious. Named after the USS Monitor, the U.S. Navy's first ironclad warship used by the Union during the Civil War, the album is inspired by that conflict and the ongoing unrest in the United States ever since. The band throws in quotes from Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis and Walt Whitman throughout the album to further the point. Stickles has explained their raison d'être as such:
"it is a record about how the conflicts that led our nation into that great calamity remain unresolved, and the effect that this ongoing division has on our personal relationships and our behavior and how they’re all out to get us (or maybe not?) and yadda yadda yadda.”
The dismissiveness at the end of that statement reflects the dichotomy of Titus Andronicus; one minute they are earnestly attempting to understand, and decry, the injustice of the world they live in, and the next they are throwing up their arms, screaming 'fuck it!' That vacillation is part of what makes the band so enjoyable. They aren't trendfucking hipsters who are too cool to be unironic, nor are they overly earnest self-righteous sourpusses. The problem with "The Monitor," though, is that musically that vacillation just isn't half as interesting or fun as you want it to be.
The band burns through the first four tracks without blinking an eye and it sounds as if they are on course for another winner of a record. Eric Harm's drums bash and pound with proper aplomb, guitarists Stickles and David Robbins throw off memorable guitar licks right and left, while Ian Graetzer's pulsating bass gives the band a strong core from which to fight. Battle cries like "The enemy is everywhere!" and "You will always be a loser!" define the songs and demand to be screamed joyfully at the top of the lungs. The band's golden run culminates with "Richard II," the best song on the album. The song is a punk rock Celtic ho-down as good, or maybe even better, than the best Pogues song. It's a militant revenge fantasy that finds Stickles declaring "There's only one dream that I keep close, and it's the one of my hand at your throat," and only seconds later claiming "I will not deny my humanity, I'll be rolling in it like a pig in feces." Dichotomy? Yes, but one that is easily understood by anyone who grew up listening to the Clash, or ever wore a Che Guevara t-shirt and meant it.
As the album proceeds, those epic "Thunder Road"-sized songs start piling up. The problem is that, with the exception of the amazing "Four Score and Seven," the songs just aren't that memorable. The nearly nine-minute "A Pot In Which To Piss," has moments of real brilliance, and certainly the final minutes of the song are some of the finest on the album, but no matter how many times I listen to it, I just can't really remember much about it once it ends. "Theme from "Cheers" is a celebration of drinking and loserdom that suffers from sounding a little too much like a generic barroom anthem. "To Old Friends and New," a duet with Jenn Wassner of Wye Oakis, continues the band's quest for blackout drunk with an attempt to fashion a closing time hymn. It is as slow and deliberate as a drunk's steps toward the couch at the end of the night. While it isn't a bad song, it just kind of brings the party way down, and again does nothing to differentiate itself from similarly situated songs. The album ends with "The Battle of Hampton Roads," a fourteen-minute epic that sounds like an old Bright Eyes outtake, but only reminds you that back in the day Connor Oberst did this kind of thing a lot better. Stickles' lyrics are properly indignant and self-loathing enough, but again the music just sounds like a generic epic rock anthem.
The lone exception, as noted before, is "Four Score and Seven," here the band takes that epic-song template and loads it full of moments of real inspiration. Beginning with strummed guitars, mournful fiddle and harmonica, the song builds to a gorgeous fanfare of horns and percussion before the band explodes at the halfway point with another punk-inspired war cry that would make Joe Strummer proud of his children. The song proves that the band has it in them to write nine-minute epics, but its shining brilliance only underscores the drab blandness of every other lengthy track here.
In the end, "The Monitor" is a picture of Titus Andronicus shooting for the moon and coming up just a little too short. One can't write off the album as sophomore slump, in fact the problem is just the opposite - too many ideas, too much ambition. As a result the album's second half is just kind of a mess, and not the ramshackle mess that one hopes for from a band that was so clearly poised to take up the mantle of the Replacements circa "Let It Be" and "Tim." Oddly enough, because of its flashes of genius and excellent first half, "The Monitor" will make the listener anxious for more from Titus Andronicus. These guys clearly have what it takes to be at the top of the indie world in them, and one can't fault them from thinking big, but they also need to play to their strengths, which are plenty, rather than chasing the shadow of that other, more well-known, Jersey giant.
"A More Perfect Union"
Titus Andronicus will be playing Radio Radio tomorrow night as part of MOKB's excellent ongoing concert series.
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