By Peter Kelly

Titus Andronicus
The Monitor
XL Recordings

Having established themselves with the album The Airing of Grievances in 2008 as a lo-fi thrash-rock band, Titus Andronicus issued their follow up this year in the form of a heady, loud, and grandiose record that covers topics ranging from depression to alcoholism to the American Civil War.  The album reaches far, and though it reaches its thematic goals, The Monitor‘s true victory is that it’s also a really kick ass rock album.

The album feels like an argument, a thesis.  Its songs are long, none of them shorter than 5 minutes.  Each track sprawls into different musical themes but never leaves the realm of blues-based chords and progressions, as if to say “this is enough, we can work with this forever.  It’s this conceit, that rock is eternal and still true and still kicks lots of ass, that could be called the ‘concept’ of the album.

This is significant in the context of the state of today’s alternative music scene.  There are of course no synths, tape loops, or fuzzy vocals on The Monitor (though the sporatically placed clips of old speech recordings are a bit grainy).  It wouldn’t be fair to say Titus Andronicus are out to make something uniquely new or that they’re aim is to buck today’s music, because nobody and everybody making music today is trying to do both, but it is clear they are striving for something that is essentially out of style.  All of the songs on The Monitor are pop-based, but none could really be called pop songs.  The (popular) contemporary band they most resemble is The Hold Steady, in their bar band feel.  But they really sound very little like The Hold Steady.

Yet their sound is immediately recognizable.  They sound like The Replacements, and Bruce Springsteen, and Bo Diddly, and The Exploding Hearts, and late ’90s New Jersey Hardcore bands.  They play R & B chords and sing about getting drunk in the suburbs, taking the cheap bus to the city, and feeling isolated and alone, yet excited and full of hope.  Rock and Roll at its core will always be an inherently teenage art form; its primary themes are sex, anger, excess, and above all boredom.  My first listen of The Monitor, I thought about driving home in my ’92 4-Runner at 2 a.m. from a party in the suburbs, windows down and just ecstatically happy about being young and free.  That this feeling stays with us a lifetime is what makes Rock music so lasting, due to be revived every few years by a band like Titus Andronicus.  Things like Chillwave and Psych revival come and go, and while there’s nothing wrong with these trends, their appeal is too rooted in context to exert significant staying power.  There may not be many bands playing right now who sound like Titus Andronicus, but The Monitor still sounds like the familiar return of an old transient friend.

You know, you should just listen to it.  Put it on in your car at the end of the work day or blast it from your home system as you get ready to go out.  Heck, Summer’s not over: grab a boombox and some beers and play it next to the grill.  Better yet, go see the band live.  They’d like that.

Release Date March 9, 2010

Track Listing

1. A More Perfect Union
2. Titus Andronicus Forever
3. No Future Part Three: Escape From No Future
4. Richard II
5. A Pot in Which to Piss
6. Four Score and Seven
7. Theme From ‘Cheers’
8. To Old Friends and New
9. …And Ever
10.  The Battle of Hampton Roads