True Jersey

Titus Andronicus' The Monitor

by J. Edward Keyes

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"A More Perfect Union," the first song on the Titus Andronicus concept record about, simultaneously, the Garden State and the Civil War, contains more references to New Jersey in its first verse than the last four Springsteen records combined. Under ordinary circumstances, this would be a red flag (as would the lyric "tramps like us, baby, we were born to die"), but they have more on their mind than simple homage. Having aged admirably since 2008's bratty The Airing of Grievances, here the band takes a lunge at its first Defining Moment.

The Monitor, named for an ironclad Civil War battleship, aims to reconcile the idea of a divided union with vocalist Patrick Stickles' own conflicted feelings about his Jersey heritage. Or does it? Stickles is the master of oblique reference, and he's front-loaded The Monitor with enough arresting phrase-turns to give even a casual listener pause. It's one of the first albums in the last 10 years that actually requires the use of its liner notes.

The group pairs Stickles' handicraft with music that's just as energetic and inventive. After a goosebump-raising opener that plays like an attempt to hybridize "Thunder Road" and "Bastards of Young," The Monitor's music becomes stubborn and circuitous. Though Titus would surely scoff at the comparison, it's not entirely unlike the last few Green Day records, where songs unspool in a series of movements rather than progressing from verse to chorus to verse again. Much of The Monitor runs in the red, Stickles' Dicky-Barrett-by-way-of-Conor-Oberst yowl the fire that powers the rattling engines. The album boasts supporting players like the Hold Steady's Craig Finn and Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner, but Stickles runs the show. "You ain't never been no virgin, kid, you were fucked from the start," he hoarsely observes on a subsection of a song named for the blog Brooklyn Vegan. Its final moments ram directly up against a quote from Walt Whitman, which then gives way to a song that nicks its title from the Gettysburg Address. What any of these things have in common is a mystery. Attempts to solve it are quixotic — and irresistible.

(j_keyes@citypaper.net)