Modern indie rock generally treats emotion as something that should be guarded or disguised. The Monitor does not subscribe to this viewpoint. On their second album, New Jersey's Titus Andronicus split the emotional atom with anthemic chants, rousing sing-alongs, celebrations of binge drinking, marathon song titles, broken-hearted duets, punked-up Irish jigs, and classic rock lyric-stealing. And through it all, they take subtlety out on the town, pour a fifth of whiskey down its throat, write insults on its face in permanent marker, and abandon it in the woods.
Loosely based on the U.S. Civil War, The Monitor may be one of the most absurd album concepts ever, invoking the battle that caused Abraham Lincoln to claim, "I am now the most miserable man living," to illustrate the sound and fury of suburban Jersey life in a shattered economy. In the annals of using historical metaphors for emotional communication, it's up there with Jeff Mangum empathizing with Anne Frank. But it all turns out so ridiculously fun-- with Ken Burns-style readings of speeches from Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, daguerreotype cover art, and song titles all participating in the reenactment-- that it never even begins to approach the pretentiousness these elements might suggest.
In the end, the Civil War is just a recurring theme, and one that's more personal than political. For stadium-rock inspiration, Titus Andronicus look no further than their home-state hero, paraphrasing Bruce Springsteen in the first song and name-checking him in the last. And while the central muse is obvious, there's a full menu of influences on display. There's the Hold Steady in its mythology of intoxication, the Pogues in its cathartic singalong gutter-punk, and Conor Oberst's Desaparacidos in its brazen earnestness. There's also the fatalistic fuck-all of early Replacements and the brutalist thrashing of east-coast hardcore in its violent instrumentation and apocalyptic worldview.
Somehow that laundry-list of inspirations all manage to make an appearance in the first two minutes of leadoff track "A More Perfect Union". After an opening half that's equal parts slop and ambition, the album turns a corner on "A Pot in Which to Piss" and settles into a reliable pattern, each song building from frontman Patrick Stickles' self-described "piss and moan" to a punk-rock fury, and finally to an instrumental call-to-arms. The repeated structure feeds the album's narrative arc and provides some much-needed breathers, until the record's big finale. At 14 minutes, "The Battle of Hampton Roads" adds a couple of extra X's to the already XL project: Oscillating even more wildly between the album's twin poles of suicidal ideation and vengeance fantasies, Stickles builds to his frothiest moment, spilling it all out in a verse that rivals Neutral Milk Hotel's "Oh Comely" for uncomfortable honesty. And in the end there's a bagpipe solo.
"The enemy is everywhere," Stickles keeps reminding us over the course of the record. It's difficult to tell what that enemy is, as Stickles' target moves from social anxiety to pure boredom to the symbolic frat-brahs of "Hampton Roads". But as the casualties pile up and the battle hymns keep egging on the troops, it becomes clear that the opponent isn't nearly as important as the fight itself. Catharsis is Stickles' fuel, and The Monitor is a 65-minute endorsement of angst and opposition as the best way to present that combustible sorrow: Light it with footlights, throw a giant shadow against the back wall, and rock the fuck out of it.
