Titus Andronicus. Jon Landau once said, way back in the last century, “I saw rock and roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen”. So much has happened in our world since that time that it is almost as if he was talking about Stephen Foster or Scott Joplin. Disco, Punk, Hip Hop, Gangsta, Grunge, Boy Bands, GaGa. Don’t even get me started. Springsteen’s still at it, but Glen Rock NJ’s own Titus Andronicus, named because of the amusing duality of Shakespearean drama and “Saw like” violence, have written the next chapter of Born to Run. No blue collar, muscle car romance here though.
Frontman Patrick Stickles channels the hyper informed, internet overwhelmed everyman—Bruce on broadband—and spews it all out, with knowing references to his patron saint in almost every song. Their second album “The Monitor” uses the civil war as a great giggling facade, with daguerreotype photos, Ken Burns like fake voice over intro’s and war battle song titles, but the songs are certainly not an Americana historical novelty concept. What is here is brutally honest rock about bleak futures, frat boy assholes, sexual selfishness, and the exquisite howl of being young and hurting, in the truly scary (how quaint does the cold war seem now?) modern world. Connor Oberst, Paul Westerberg and Ian Mackaye all come through in this glorious messy thrash with aspirations of arena epic scope that they actually pull off. The video(s) above are of the 12 minute + last song on the album, “The Battle of Hampton Roads” recorded just this past week at NJ’s greatest record store, Vintage Vinyl in Fords.
“…and half the time I open my mouth to speak it’s to repeat something that i heard on TV,
and I’m destroying everything that wouldnt make me more like Bruce Springsteen.”
