![]() Titus Andronicus - fundamentally rebellious, but with an intensely cerebral bent - seems perfect for the job, bringing just the right combination of perfectionism and innovation. I doubt that any other bands approaching the mainstream could have pulled this album off. Titus Andronicus uses a musical structure that few other artists have dared to use, and the results attest to their success. Those refrains provide the record’s most dramatic and poignant lines: the volcanic “You will always be a loser” in “No Future Part III,” strangely triumphant in its defeatism the nervous “The enemy is everywhere” in “Titus Andronicus Forever,” reassuring in its paranoia the frantic “It’s still us against them” on “Four Score and Seven,” unvanquished in its defiance. There are no choruses in this album, only repeated anthemic refrains, shouted with an intensity and fervor rarely heard in modern music. One brilliant riff comes after another, and melodies arrive in rapid succession, all coming together to create a violent, rowdy work of punk rock. Unlike most other modern rock albums, this is no mere assortment of songs - no, this is a symphony, in which the music comes and goes but never ceases it demands total attention throughout. But the record has much more in store.įor “The Monitor” reaches stunning heights. The song moves with rebellious spirit - the result of its lo-fi production and unruly instrumentation. Two minutes later he borrows extensively from the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” urging his ragged band of Jersey punk warriors to rally round the flag and shout the battle cry of freedom. He re-appropriates Springsteen - “Tramps like us, baby we were born to die” - and the guitar breaks into an untamed solo. Soon, Titus Andronicus is off and running, as the percussion propels the band forward and singer Patrick Stickles spits out images of the rusting modern Northeast. ![]() ![]() It opens with a prescient speech from Lincoln, delivered twenty years before the war began: “As a nation of free men,” Lincoln says, “we will live forever or die by suicide,” a prophecy at once terrifying and thrilling. “A More Perfect Union,” the album’s opening track, a microcosm of the record. Between most songs comes a lengthy quotation of sorts, spoken through a distorted microphone, as if from behind a veil - from Lincoln and Douglass, or perhaps from Garrison or an anonymous soldier. I know of no other record quite like “The Monitor.” Named after the Union’s first ironclad warship, the album loses itself in the infinitude of the Civil War, dives headfirst into American history and wades through our complicated memory. In the summer of 2009, a group of New Jersey punk rockers - named after Shakespeare’s most violent play, Titus Andronicus - assembled to record an album that would examine that terrible conflict. Just over two weeks later, Joseph Johnston and his Army of the South also surrendered, this time to the marauding William Tecumseh Sherman, finally bringing an end to four years of civil war. Grant in the antechamber of a small house. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. The cannon fell silent at Appomattox nearly 150 years ago, as Robert E.
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