The Year in Music - My Favorite Album of 2010

Finally, we reach the end.

Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

I was initially sort of dreading this album's release. I'm not really big on concept albums, and when it comes to history, I've never really been all that interested in the Civil War. So when I learned that Titus Andronicus were following up 2008's 'The Airing of Grievances' with a sprawling epic of a Civil War themed concept album, I was skeptical. I was also very wrong to be skeptical.

This is not an easy album to love from the start. This is an album lover's album in the age of singles and one track downloads. Compared to a band like, say, the Drums, who's album has all of two songs that clock in at barely over four minutes, 'The Monitor' is 67 minutes long, and it does that in only ten tracks, two of which take up a combined 4:19. So that's eight tracks lasting an average of just under eight minutes long. This album has a lot going against it.

That said, I'm worried about Titus Andronicus. I'm worried about where they go from here. I'm worried that they won't be able to top this. 'The Monitor' is an ambitious album that sets a very high bar for itself, and manages to somehow exceed all expectations. They set out to create an album that tells the loose story of a young man's journey from his small New Jersey town to the bright lights of Boston, and they decided to tell the story using a Civil War motif. It's punctuated with Abe Lincoln and Jefferson Davis speeches, pamphlet and poetry readings. It's really kinda nuts.

But it's also a monumental achievement. It's almost not a collection of separate tracks so much as one long movement. The typical song starts slow, with an almost depressed sounding Patrick Stickles bearing his soul. Before long, they've built up to a raucous, angry, spittle flecked rant proclaiming at various points that "You will always be a loser", "You ain't never been no virgin, kid, you were fucked from the start", and "It's still us against them". This is not an album you will instantly love. You need to spend some time with it. You need to work a little bit to love it. But the payoff is absolutely worth it. It's stuff that really plays incredibly well live.

It begins with a reading from Abe Lincoln's Lyceum address leading into the beat for the song that's my choice for the best track of 2010, 'A More Perfect Union'. The album culminates in the 14 minute long epic 'the Battle of Hampton Roads', named after the two day long Civil War naval battle of ironclad warships, in which the inspiration for the album's title, the USS Monitor, fought the CSS Virginia to a virtual draw. In the song, our beaten protagonist leaves Boston defeated, but determined to remain "...as much of an asshole as [he's] ever been".

Like I said, I don't know how they top it. But I can't wait to see them try. And even if they never tread this ground again, they've left us with masterpiece.

I'm going to post the official video for 'A More Perfect Union', and by all means, watch and get the visual, but they cut the song in half, and the second part is every bit as good as the first. I'd suggest clicking on the second vid to hear the whole thing.

A More Perfect Union, a less than perfect cut of the song.


A More Perfect Union


A Pot in Which to Piss


The Battle of Hampton Roads (all 14+ minutes of it)

Titus Andronicus @ the Bottom Lounge - 4/7/10

Skipped the first opener, and stood around for the Saps, a local Chicago band that reminded me a fair amount of Team Band. I love Team Band, but they're kind of a hard band to emulate without making it really obvious. Maybe it's all coincidence and they there's no influence there, but it sure sounded like it to me.

TA took the stage around 10:45 or so, and played for a good 1:20, with no encores. But man, it was a really rollicking set. There's so much energy and passion in Patrick Stickles' screaming voice that it's hard not to get sucked in. And especially with the new material, with their slow, quiet intros that descend into a maelstrom of noise, they just have a way of sucking you in until you can't help but give in to noise. I'm not usually one for a lot of audience participation, but listen to the first song linked below and, well, if you see them live, try not to sing along with the Ooo Ooo - Na Na Na part at the 2:44 mark (note, this video is cut to only half the song - they cut out a great second half for the radio edit).



For as much energy as they put into their set, I'm a little surprised they played as long as they did. I was also curious to see how they would handle the new material. For those of you unfamiliar, 'The Monitor' is a sort of concept album about a kid who leaves New Jersey for Boston, and ends up returning to New Jersey after not quite finding what he was looking for. The kicker is that it's told through Civil War imagery. It's really quite impressive, but the album itself is a 10 song, 67 minute drama with each song segueing into the next. If you didn't know where the track breaks were, you could probably figure them out, but it would be tough, and you'd probably get some wrong. So the question was whether they could play some of those songs as stand alones, or whether they'd play the album from beginning to end. The played them as stand alones, out of order, mixing in songs from the first album, and it played great in my opinion. The incomplete and out of order setlist (actually, I think this is the right order, since I stole it from this guy - in my own defense, I had all the songs right):

• A More Perfect Union (opened with this)
• Joset of Nazareth Blues
• A Pot in Which to Piss
• Upon Viewing Breughle's 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'
• Richard II
• Fear and Loathing in Mawhaw, NJ
• No Future Part Three: Escape From No Future
• Titus Andronicus
• My Time Outside the Womb
• The Battle of Hampton Roads
• Titus Andronicus Forever
• Four Score and Seven

The opener and closer are right, and the middle of that setlist is a rough estimate of where songs fit in. So many of the songs on the new album are of this epic length and structure that they could easily be closers, but Four Score and Seven did the trick nicely (Battle of Hampton Roads, all 14 minutes of it, closes the album).

As for the concert experience, I was just outside the mosh pit, which was a perfect place to stand. I'm well past moshing age, and I was never much of a mosher to begin with. Still, I was close enough to feel like a part of the action. I don't love the Bottom Lounge, but it's growing on me a bit. I still wish they would publish the door time AND the show time so that I'm not tricked into getting there an hour early, but I've learned to work around that. Hopefully these guys get a good slot at Pitchfork, where there's a good crowd that can really get into the atmosphere of the music. Pics and another couple vids below.

Titus Andronicus (song)


Four Score and Seven