Titus Andronicus - "The Monitor"

I first heard Titus Andronicus during a drive last September to see the Butthole Surfers in New Orleans. I mention this because in The Monitor ‘s accompanying Union blue booklet there are eight quotes from Civil War figures … and one unrelated quote from The Butthole Surfers! I’ll admit that made me somewhat predisposed to liking Titus Andronicus’ sophomore effort, but not as much as I do. It’s the first record this year that’s really stopped me in my tracks and made me listen. I can’t stop playing it.

Titus Andronicus is a 5-piece band from Glen Rock, New Jersey but on The Monitor the line-up numbers 24. And that’s not including the four “Monitor Players” who provide the voices of the Civil War figures, including The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn as Walt Whitman. You need a line-up this big because The Monitor is an ambitious project clocking in at 65:29.

Not only that, it’s a concept album. Because there’s been an unexpected renaissance in this mp3 era we’re living in: the concept album’s making a comeback; has “been for years” as LL Cool J might rap. The Aughties gave us The Libertines’ The Libertines, The Hold Steady’s Separation Sunday, The Antlers’ Hospice, and Flaming Lips’ Embryonic. And the trend goes on in 2010 with The Monitor.

Titus Andronicus proudly calls itself a punk band and they are … just not in the classical sense, except perhaps lyrically. They prefer fast paced songs and their music does reincarnate aspects of The Replacements and The Pogues, two eighties bands that had punk qualities about them. It’s just that in listening to Titus Andronicus you’ll also find the vocal traits of Okkervill River, murmurs of Neutral Milk Hotel, song titles worthy of Surjan Stevens, even strains of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band. (I know I know: a dirty word (to some (so to speak) as Kurt Cobain used to sing, but Titus Andronicus would probably be pleased by the comparison. They even paraphrase ‘Born To Run’ on the opening track, name check Bruce on the closer, and the CD’s inner liner notes’ cheers Bruce and The E Street Band as one of the bands listed in a New Jersey Honor Roll, to which Titus Andronicus is certain to be affixed to some day if they keep issuing albums of this caliber.

But enough of that chatter. Let’s board The Monitor.

A More Perfect Union 7:09
The opening track begins with an Abraham Lincoln quote, cluing in the listener that The Monitor’s no ordinary album. Civil War quotes and imagery become metaphors for the protagonist’s struggle: a civil war is been waging between the protagonist and society.

At least that’s my take on it. With references to place-names and roads in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, the singer is fleeing New Jersey for a school in Somerville, MA, which I’m assuming is Tufts University. I get the sense Somerville’s not what he expected it to be but I’m not sure. What I am sure about is that the singer’s lyrics capture freshman angst perfectly. Cushioned in confident chords, a terrible situation is actually uplifting and you can’t help but find yourself singing along by the time Titus Andronicus gets to the part about rallying around the flag.

Titus Andronicus Forever or Theme From “The Monitor” 1:54
The singing along continues with The Monitor’s shortest song, a six-line ditty where five of the lines point out that “The enemy is everywhere!” It’s a lively track with a barreling rhythm that accomplishes what the best punk songs do: an oppressive situation becomes triumphant.

No Future Part Three: Escape From No Future 5:19
Each song bleeds into another on this album … often under the cover of a quotation. It’s almost like for each song you can hear the band assembling for duty. The pace slows down a bit here, reflecting the singer’s struggle with pharmaceutical abuse and a bit of a personality crisis as “there is another down in the dungeon who never gave up the fight.” The druggie’s eventual success is dependent on listening to the part of his split personality – a prisoner - who’s telling him “you’ll always be a loser, and that’s okay.” It’s when he learns to accept his limitations that he will transcend them.

Richard II or Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds 5:06
‘Richard II’ begins with Eric Harm’s drumming. I love that name - it’s got to be a punk pseudonym – and I love his drumming. Every great band’s got a great drummer and Titus Andronicus’ great drummer is Eric Harm. This song also features the band’s Pogueish characteristics. There were hints of this in some of the instrumental passages during ‘A More Perfect Union’, but this is the song where I hear The Pogues proudly cavorting and raising their glasses.

It’s also a nice touch when a band named after a Shakespearean play, references another.

A Pot In Which To Piss 8:53
Got to talk about the song structures and this is as good a place as any. ‘A Pot In Which To Piss’ is the first of three that surpass the 8-minute mark and is credited to T. Andronicus of New Jersey. Like three other songs on The Monitor, the lyrics come with subheadings. I just checked Wikipedia and Titus Andronicus never released an EP called Drunk and Alone on Valentine’s Day of which the first part of this is the theme to - (Titus Andronicus has a thing for theme songs.) – so this can’t be what the singer’s referring to when he says “it sounded like a pretty good seven inch.” Nevertheless, this track is in some way the centerpiece of The Monitor because it’s about being in a band. It’s about realizing college is not the means to the future (despite “a couple of good grades”) but the band you’re in just might be. Not that a band’s success doesn’t come without trials and tribulations. There’s “an unflattering photograph … all over town,” comments that “they’re funny, but they drink too much” (just like The Replacements and The Pogues!!!), and advice that “There ain’t no more Rolling Stones.”

Four Score And Seven 8:38
Titus Andronicus is on record as not being opposed to slow songs but what I like about their slow songs is that – for the most part – they never stay stuck in that lack of speed. Case in point is ‘Four Score and Seven’, perhaps lyrically the most dismal. Studded with religious imagery it begins at a slow point and a claim that “This is a war we can’t win.” Despite some success – musical I suppose – the singer is suffering “In miserable quote-unquote art.” Actually a lot of the lyrics on The Monitor are in this vein – very existential - but the vocalist(s) at least aren’t whiney about it. And neither is the music.

Theme From “Cheers” 5:01
My favorite track. It might have something with my mother’s recent death, but when Titus Andronicus sings “I’m sorry Momma” it strikes a nerve. Actually I think my mother’s death has nothing to do with it. It is the singer’s pitch. It perfectly captures the tone of a son speaking to his disappointed “Momma”and apologizing for the night of drinking to come. I really love this song. For three nights in a row now I’ve woken up in the middle of night with this song playing in that juke box brain of mine.

This song also brings to mind Wilco by the way.

To Old Friends And New 7:00
Another slow point on the album but this one never picks up tempo. This song appears to be the mother’s point of view, perhaps after her son’s come home from the drinking he foretold in the previous track. Actually I’m somewhat confused about the point of view. At times it sounds like a girlfriend too, especially the line about “If I could be there to keep satisfied all of your carnal desires” but weird as it may be, this still seems to be the mother talking while looking at him sleeping it off.

… And Ever 2:24
The Butthole Surfers occasionally had a recurrent theme song on their recordings (e.g, ‘Graveyard’ on Locust Abortion Technician) and since someone’s clearly a Buttholes fan in Titus Andronicus, I wonder if the slight return to ‘The Enemy Is Everywhere’ is another tip to the Buttholes. Maybe not. This version’s sloppier than the first and continues to feature the “pianny” that features in ‘…And Ever’, only this time with horns thrown in too, reminding me that old school punk and hardcore bands like The Stooges and Swell Maps and The Minutemen weren’t afraid to use horns.

The Battle of Hampton Roads 14:01
The Monitor that this recording is named after was an ironclad warship that played a prominent role in The Battle of Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862, and the first verse recounts the aftermath of that battle as “two great ships … pull back to their ports”; as does our hero who is returning to New Jersey with some hard learned acceptance of life’s limitations and his lifestyle. And so we find ourselves riding along with him again; leaving Boston and “heading west on 84 again.” (I-84 in Connecticut is the known as “The Yankee Expressway”: another Civil War allusion.) The song’s churning chords befit a road song and it’s a fun song to drive to as I have done often.

The last six minutes or so are mostly instrumental and feature the battalion of musicians that Titus Andronicus has recruited to help them fully realize The Monitor. There are bagpipes galore and it sounds like a good parade marching off into the distance. It’s all very militaristic. Then the reels assert themselves and begin spiraling drunkenly towards a long drawn out fadeout that suddenly cuts.

Just like this review.