Album Details

• Artist: Titus Andronicus
• Album: The Monitor
• Label: XL
• Year of Release: 2010
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: kev_stev on 2010-03-24

The first time I saw Glen Rock, New Jersey's Titus Andronicus I became an instant fan.  It is hard to scope a band at first listen so I purchased their only album, The Airing of Grievances, which, somehow, captured the intensity of their live performance.  The band instantly became my jogging music of choice: lengthy punk-rock rhythms and piercing instrumentals over lead singer Patrick Stickles' spewing of existential lyrics.

While I will not endorse the band's second full length, The Monitor, as the ideal weight-loss program, its music is undeniably compelling and unapologetically forceful.  While The Airing of Grievances was constantly pegged as an imitation of Conor Oberst (of Bright Eyes), The Monitor is much more vintage Jersey, playing like Bruce Springsteen with a punkier, more discordant sound.

Based loosely around the Civil War, opener "A More Perfect Union" begins with an Abraham Lincoln quotation until tremulous drums and raucous vocals propel the song into a drunken choir of chanting.  Despite the apparent revelry and jolting electric guitars, melancholy and paranoia pervade the song, as Stickles yearns for a "new New Jersey" and suspiciously observes "the enemy rustling around in the trees."  The music maintains the intensity of a short punk song for over six minutes, exuding confidence and joy that belies the lyrics' anxiety.

The album's songs are mostly epics, averaging over six minutes per track, including the behemoth concluder, "The Battle of Hampton Roads," which clocks in at over fourteen minutes.  "The Battle..." is the band's closest Conor Oberst impression, which, despite the connotations of excessive emotionality, should be taken as a compliment.  However, Bright Eyes could never pull off a bagpipe solo to conclude a song as successfully; even the sax solo that ends "...And Ever" is the E Street at their best.  Titus Andronicus keeps pushing the envelope sonically, taking the best from their influences and fully indulging their highly ambitious pursuits.

The core of the album features two 8+ minute songs, "A Pot in Which to Piss" and "Four Score and Seven."  The former captures the atmosphere of a western bar, beginning with boozy vocals and ending with jittery pianos, violent screams, and a choral of chants over Neutral Milk Hotel-inspired horns.  The latter then emerges gently with harmonica-laden blues, progressively building to its climactic crescendo, where horns blare and Stickles screams, "You won't be laughing so hard!"  The song unwinds then starts back up with fury, marking the album's climax with a pivotal exclamation, "It's still us against them / And they're winning."

This album challenges its listeners; it is unrelenting and full of depth, taking serious listens to make sense of the album's historical concept, spoken interludes, epic endeavors, and sometimes exhausting length.  It is remarkably ambitious in an age littered with cookie-cutter singles and condescending albums, fully deserving of one's undivided attention, even if it takes months to unravel.  This is the standard that all bands should aspire to; this is the kind of album that makes people love music.

User Reviews and Comments

Review:

on 2012-02-08 CharlesMartel Said:

A completely unremarkable album which nevertheless gained considerable attention and some acclaim when it came out, Titus Andronicus' third offering, "The Monitor" leaves me without feeling, without a memory of it and almost without recognition that it exists. If it weren't for the fact that the album is so reminiscent of a lot of Bruce Springsteen's stuff, you would be hard put to even recall it at all. To appreciate this you really have to use your imagination and think what it could have been like if only what is wrong with it was put right. So, let's use some imagination and see what we can improve to make "The Monitor" sound better.

Let us start with the vocals. To put those right I recommend shooting the vocalist. Lacklustre, passionless, dreary are just three adjectives which spring to mind when listening to this. Sometimes the words are spoken, which is when they are at their best, but for the most part the vocals are just completely dull.

Next up, the lyrics. Assuming the lyricist is not the vocalist, whom we have already shot, to put the lyrics right I recommend electrocuting the lyricist. Whoever wrote these lyrics lives under the deluded impression that he is Shakespeare when in fact he is not even William McGonagle. There seem to be pretensions to ape the Decemberists with Civil War themes. If so, forget it.

Now onto the production. To improve the production I recommend drowning the producer. There are some albums which deserve and benefit from a lo-fi production technique and others which do not. This album definitely does not and the decision to record it in such a style smacks of pretentious bandwagon jumping in an attempt to appeal directly to a certain section of the hipster crowd.

Finally, the music. To improve the music I recommend taking the entire band to the top of a very tall building and then pushing them off it. They seem to have adopted the approach that they should build into the songs as many different musical instruments as possible - fiddles and saxophones for example. And ending the album with a boring fourteen minute long snooze fest, "The Battle of Hampton Roads", is not the way to endear a band to their listeners.

So there we have it. Four quick and easy suggestions to make this album a better one. Now if Titus Andronicus, for the next album, can follow my recommendations we would all be better off.
Rating: 2/10

Review:

on 2010-06-03 mooseman Said:

You can't take one listen and pass judgment on this album. It takes multiple listens to it as a whole to really understand. The album starts off with the track "A More Perfect Union" which hooks your attention from the start with a fiery quote from Abraham Lincoln followed by a seven minute jam which instrumentally ranges from fast paced guitar pieces to very staccato drum beats reminiscent of a military march, which is fairly appropriate given the civil war allegory used throughout the album. Lyrically the song seems to have some kind of doomed underdog feeling to it. The next track is really just a fast paced filler to keep your attention. The next track "No Future Part III" is a perfect example of how they are able to smoothly make a dramatic shift in the tone and speed of their songs in the blink of an eye. Most of the songs on the album do this frequently. This album is not for those with a short attention span because many of the songs stretch to over 5 minutes long, which both contributes and takes away from the album. While in many of the songs they demonstrate their dynamic range, some of the songs stretch on for entirely too long. Lyrically they are an interesting combination of hopeless without crossing over to the emo realm, bitter, and a strange sort of fiery rowdiness that keeps the hopelessness in check. Don't listen to this album in pieces (with the exception of a more perfect union) because it is much better as a whole. Despite my 10/10 rating, it is not a perfect album, but I think that this band has great potential and I am eager to see what they do in the future. By the way, don't skip tracks on this album based on the first minute or two because chances are that if it starts out dull, it will pick up.
Rating: 10/10

on 2010-06-02 tosnob Said:

This album was dull and amateurish.
Rating: 4/10