There is a cycle to a rock bands life: release the album, do press, tour, take a break, write songs, record songs, repeat.
And the press portion has a life of maybe a month after the albums release -when the interviews and reviews come out.
But we aren’t the press, we are bloggers, so fuck that. I still listen to Titus Andronicus every second I can. Months in and it is still a beautiful thing to behold. A rock opera about real life, about life as is being lived outside your window, and about the Civil War, and about becoming a rock star, and about getting fucked over by girls. And about a sound you can hear in your heart… guitars, year, electric guitars, and also pianos and horns and drums drum drums and so many hooks and words… words that are part of my lexicon now: “the enemy is everywhere”, “I do believe they’ve had enough of me”, “while we’re young, boys, everybody raise your glasses high”, “and I’d be nothing without you, my darling, please don’t ever leave…
The Monitor is album I’ll take with me to my grave… it repays my love by throwing up songs I’d missed the first time, “Richard II,” “A Pot To Piss In” and that takes me back to the beginning.
It is so passionate, no important, such a rallying cry for… freedom? For being free to pursue lives you’ve been told you can’t have.
I was mentioning the Iranian rock bands who risk everything to perform heavy metal, to sing in English: to do what they love. And Titus Andronicus, Patrick Stickles, is about a different type of pressure, a different type of end that only great rock can save you from.
Take It Easy, Hospital, ended up in jail and exile for following their dreams but their dreams set them free. And Titus Andronicus follow a similar trajectory which, if certainly not the physical threat of the iranian bands, was no less a terrifying and nihilistic (in the worst sense of the word) ending if they were unable to pursue their dreams.
I don’t really care what it all means, I really don’t. because like all the best albums, I’ll give it my meaning, I imprint myself upon it. Every civil war is the Lebanese civil war for me, every lost love is Nicki.
Like all the best songs, they are simultaneously open ended and specific:
“You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
And that’s okay”