No band in the past decade has worked harder to reassert the notion that rock ‘n’ roll is capital-I Important than Titus Andronicus. Everything they do is powered by the belief that listening to rock ‘n’ roll can save your life and that playing it can save the lives of others. To ensure that transformative tradition carries over to future generations, they've resorted to the most extreme measures—epic narrative concept albums, encyclopedic cover-song selections, relentless touring, 9,000-word essays on The Replacements. If their records can overwhelm, it’s not due to their length, but because their commitment to hitting you on all levels—physical, emotional, visceral, lyrical, spiritual—never wavers. And while those aren’t the sort of qualities that guarantee stardom in the 21st-century, the least Titus Andronicus can do is make their home base in a roughshod Brooklyn DIY space, call it Shea Stadium, and get treated like The Beatles every night.
This Shea Stadium was, naturally, where Titus Andronicus stationed themselves last July to celebrate the release of their 2015 triple-album rock opera, The Most Lamentable Tragedy, and ringleader Patrick Stickles’ 30th birthday. But it was also a moment for the band to take stock of their remarkable 10-year run to date and reconnect with old friends and heroes over the course of five sold-out shows at the venue. Judging from the setlists and sweat-soaked footage, they looked like truly special events, with each show boasting a uniquely epic, career-spanning repertoire dotted with the deepest of deep cuts and rare experiments (like performing the various installments of their “No Future” song cycle in sequential order). And that’s to say nothing of the karaoke-bar procession of covers—Springsteen, the Stones, Weezer, Semisonic’s “Closing Time,” hell, even the Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week”—they attempted with guests like Ted Leo and the Hold Steady’s Craig Finn. The Shea Stadium residency yielded precisely the sort of freewheeling, one-of-a-kind shows that deserve a proper live-album document—one that could serve as both a greatest-hits overview of Titus’ expansive catalogue and a portrait of their extended community. Sort of like a Last Waltz without the sense of impending demise.
Alas,* S+@dium Rock: Five Nights at the Opera* harbors no such aspirations. Rather, the album is essentially a single-platter sampler of highlights from The Most Lamentable Tragedy, a record so dense, it features an actual intermission. Ten of S+@dium Rock’s 11 tracks are taken from that record, or constitute variations thereof; the exception is album outtake “69 Stones,” a weight-bearing drifter’s lament that—true to the band’s penchant for rock-referential puns—also happens to resemble the sort of country-honked serenade that’d be right at home on Let It Bleed.
Taken as a whole, S+@dium Rock ultimately feels less like a document of an historic homecoming event and more like the sort of bonus material that comprises the extra disc of a deluxe reissue. Beyond the lamentable lack of covers and guest appearances (one-night-only elements that would greatly enhance the sense of occasion), this set sacrifices Titus’ most crucial quality: their sense of carefully plotted momentum, which has always made navigating their sprawling albums feel less like a slog and more like riding an expertly engineered rollercoaster. The album is tripped up by patchy pacing from the outset: just as we’re thrust into the thick of the pit with the exhilarating opening rip through “Dimed Out”, an awkward, mid-banter fade-out leads us to an extended riff on “Lonely Boy”, the sort of limb-loosened jam that makes more sense as a mid-set breather.
But if S+@dium Rock’s intent is simply to strip away TMLT’s imposing conceptual framework and present Titus as a populist party band, then mission accomplished. For all their intimations of depression and prescription-pill dependency, songs like “I Lost My Mind (+@)” and “Fatal Flaw” were meant to be shouted back by drunken, dehydrated crowds smushed up against the stage in a claustrophobically humid, low-ceilinged room. And S+@dium Rock ’s more fluid second half—which showcases an uninterrupted six-song stretch—also retrofits some of TMLT’s more meditative songs to better suit the raucous atmosphere: The piano-ballad reverie “No Future Part V: In Endless Dreaming” is transformed into a raging, amped-up shanty, while the album’s squeezebox-wheezing last gasp, “Stable Boy,” is dramatically reborn as a last call–summoning climax. And that, in turn, sets up the closing “Stranded (On Our Own),” a veritable remix of the TMLT rave-up “Stranded (On My Own)” that strip-mines the latter’s last line (“I thought that you and me were really get along”) and repeats it with manic, mantric abandon.
In these moments of inspired de/reconstruction, S+@dium Rock brings to mind the Who circa Live at Leeds, another raw retort to a grandiose rock opera. But as that last song fades out, you can hear Stickles say, “it’s getting to be that time folks…”—suggesting that we just heard wasn’t the grand finale, but merely a set-up for even greater moments yet to come.The best live albums make you feel like you were there, and this one is hardly lacking for vicarious thrills. But by revealing the seams of its selective setlist, S+@dium Rock also oddly emphasizes what we missed.
