(XL)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
This is not The Monitor, the high-concept 2010 record by Titus Andronicus that launched them into a world of ten-best lists, but nor is it thoroughly lacking in the earlier album's earnest grandness. We're no longer being thrust into a Civil War battlefield; the setting here is Patrick Stickles' heart and mind and all their own jarring impulses. One immediately notices a deliberate reining in of the production style on the aptly titled, aptly illustrated Local Business; the sound is punkish, thinner and more pressing if no less vital. There is, in a word I'd prefer not to use, less here that is "epic."
Nevertheless, this is a big album by design when you think about; modeling itself on Springsteen, the Rolling Stones and the Replacements, it's a true rock & roll album. More specific to its touch of the working-class anthemic is its status as a true American album, a true New Jersey album -- a gritty catharsis of drinking songs and camraderie by a group of decent guys who aren't afraid to occasionally expose their dark side, one defined by self-doubt and self-abuse rather than contempt for others. Like The Monitor, it's a quintessentially masculine recording, but not a "macho" one.
The three opening cuts are frayed, unslick fight songs that bleed into one another. The meaty punk of "Ecce Homo" is simple but towering, with Stickles' unprocessed and small voice struggling to be heard over the unadorned sludge. The band holds tight a bit until unleashing a skilled guitar attack atop the minimal punk rock on "Still Life with Hot Deuce on Silver Platter." The riffs are chunky and big, the melody is strong, and the tempo change on the bridge is utter screaming triumph, with "I'm not gonna cry!" the first of many built-in singalongs. It calls to mind Westerberg as well as Rhett Miller when both were more interested in rousing and commanding big groups of people, at least until its lovely Nicky Hopkins-like piano fade.
The hooks keep coming, aligned with Stickles' lilt and whine and scream, until the New York Dolls diversion of "Food Fight!" -- mostly an instrumental with exactly the chanted refrain you'd expect -- which along with the repetitive Ramones-lite "Titus Andronicus vs. the Absurd Universe" would've probably seemed more at home on a more self-consciously sprawling album; they're here just distractions. In between them lies the oddly triumphant extended rant "My Eating Disorder," which is about just that and contains the album's major musical risky strokes, a pounding and scary torment that Stickles makes harrowing with just the right balance of personal detail and universal dread. As a rallying cry, "Spit it out!" is no "The enemy is everywhere!" but it reveals significantly more.
"My Eating Disorder" sets the stage for the record's breathtaking second half. The final four cuts are as populist and immediate as this band is ever likely to get, tempering the slow release of something like "The Battle of Hampton Roads" with a restrained use of gigantic hooks and Stones riffs and -- until the finale, at least -- somewhat economical pacing. "From Jersey I come!" is the announcement on the glorious "In a Big City," an almost chanted mission statement, but "In a Small Body" turns these instantly appealing illusions of rock & roll spontaneity into a Pavement-like parlor game of cranked-up burger joint music that secretly means to wound. The absurdity of Stickles' lyric is barely noticeable against the brilliant throwback arrangement, which builds to an incongruously pretty choral decoration of "don't ever get in the waaaay," a classic Titus Andronicus sentiment of sorts. In the same vein, "(I Am the) Electric Man" is literally about being electrocuted but is a pure pop singalong with a "Honky Tonk Women" backdrop.
You're meant to stomp and clap and get a rise out of all this; it's punk gospel, if you will. The grand finale, "Tried to Quit Smoking," will surprise no one; it's the big ballad move that The Monitor hinted at in places, harnessing the rawness of the room for something stark and meditative, throwing off devastating but simple confessions -- "It's not that I wanted to hurt you, I just didn't care if I did" -- then suddenly, at the end, it's the fucking blues! Which is only too appropriate on an album that in nearly every sense is an unpretentious rallying cry that could've been issued thirty-five years ago next to Saints and Only Ones LPs and, except for the unbearably pretentious song titles, few people would've noticed. What Titus Andronicus have managed here is a record that's both destined for fist-pounding communal release in a certain setting but is also intimate, personal, and prepared to forge an immediate connection with the individual listener. It may not have the scope and breadth of The Monitor, sure, but it has something equally special.
[SEE ALSO:]
The Monitor (2010)
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