A Round of Sound

Titus Andronicus – The Monitor [XL; released 3/9/2010]

“The enemy is everywhere.”

“Titus Andronicus Forever”

Using the American Civil War as a metaphor for personal internal strife is really nothing new. In fact, it’s actually a pretty tired cliche. Generally, if a band tries to pull off something of that caliber, it’s seen as an incredibly overblown attempt at self-importance and quite pretentious. So how then is Titus Andronicus able to pull off a concept album loosely based on events of the Civil War to the point where it seems not only genuine, but also original? Answer: I don’t know exactly. But, with The Monitor, they sure as hell do. And in doing so, they’ve created the best album of 2010.

One thing that certainly doesn’t hurt is the fact that the album absolutely rocks. There is no shortage of riffs one bit, and it contains an abundance of hooks that many rock bands would spend an entire career searching for. Every song is a go-by for sing along anthems, complete with massive choruses that just urge you to belt from the top of your lungs “It’s still us against them!” over and over again as lead singer Patrick Stickles does to close out album centerpiece “Four Score and Seven”.  There’s some Irish jig type sounds in the music, but it’s the Springsteen influence (and the Civil War motif, obviously) that make this a truly great American rock album. For an album that is so intelligent and clearly was labored on in fine detail, it’s amazing how natural and fun the entire thing sounds. The emotion and angst heard in Stickles vocals is that of legends and really is what keeps the album grounded as a personal experience but nothing that ever really comes across as too self-indulgent.

The 10 tracks of The Monitor clock in at 65 minutes thanks to half the tracks passing the 7 minute mark. A release of that length can usually come across as exhausting, but for The Monitor, there really is no better word to describe it other than epic. We hear that term thrown around quite often (hell, I’ve probably used it numerous times during this very countdown), but no offense to any other so called “epic” releases this year, you’ve got nothing on The Monitor; nor does any album released in the past 3 or 4 years. The raw and gritty nature of this album is something you can truly sense throughout its 10 tracks. The tears and sweat put into it are truly palpable, as is the blood spilled on the battlefield. With all that said, it still comes back to the music. In any album I name as my album of the year, there’s often a moment that just gets to me and offers a moment of pure joy that pretty much nails it down as my album of the year. Well, there’s numerous moments of joy on The Monitor, but the one that gets me the most comes about an hour into the disc, during the 14 minute closer “The Battle of Hampton Roads”. After a buildup featuring some incredible lyrics, awesome little guitar solos, and a final breakdown consisting of the simple refrain “Please don’t ever leave,” we reach the climax: an instrumental outro when none other than bagpipes show up to perform a solo. Bagpipes! What an amazingly poignant way to close out not just any album, but this album. It gives me chills every time. The bagpipes eventually come to an end and we’re left with yet another set of guitar riffs that an entire album could be made out of. So when all is said and done, the reasons a band like Titus Andronicus could pull off such an ambitious project like this is actually pretty clear: just put your heart into it and have a blast. It really isn’t all that new of a concept, and if the listener puts in the same effort, he or she will get just as much out of it as Titus Andronicus did.

[“The Battle of Hampton Roads” – The Monitor]

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 20th, 2011 at 9:39 pm and is filed under All, Music, Top Albums of 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.