As we speak, I've been working on my list of the best albums of 2012 thru October 31st and Local Business is # 3 and it is still a disappointment. I don't know how Titus Andronicus constant Patrick Stickles could have improved upon TA's 2010, The Monitor, an album I considered the best of 2010 and still underestimated. The only way Stickles could have possible upped the ante would've been to write "Bohemian Rhapsody".
Patrick is a New Jersey boy who discovered punk and formed punk bands in High School, discovered existential angst and a failed romance in a Boston college while studying to follow in his parents footsteps as a teacher in college,came home, move to New York and formed Titus Andronicus, the most erudite punk rock band known to man. His first album, The Airing Of Grievances, covered the college years, The Monitor got him back to NJ and Local Business covers post-Titus Andronicus fame.
The Monitor informed everything around, imagine Fucked Up's David Comes To Life without it. But that isn't what Local Business is, it doesn't continue on, except the narrative, it steadies itself and stays in place. A great touring album, some of Local Business will be perfection on stage, without the aria movements of "The Battle Of Hampton Road" type stuff, Patrick can bring to life his own dreams of punk domination and anti-social distortion of the social norms.
On record, it is pretty close to perfect as well in its own justification, but there is a confusion here. I have always considered Titus Andronicus a community based band but I think I've seriously missed the point. Local Business might well be a DIY sensibility in doing it yourself? Surely doing it yourself suggest s a LACK OF COMMUNITY. The confusion lies in Stickles being a master of both the aphorism and the anthem, if you are insisting upon community joining in, how can you be anti-social.
It is called be an American, from John Wayne to Stickles, American has thrived on the edge of the social. The complaint might be that Stickles is a misanthropic and self loathing but neither sounds 100% right. I can't think of anybody with even the slightest imagination who can be self-satisfied. A sense of your inner tick tock insists upon a fleshy horror in the face of your worthlessness. So Stickles is a great American loner, filled with self-doubt. And he turns it into art. His art, what this John Wayne is about, is the singularity of the human experience as reflected in his own self awareness. The community lies in an unasked but central question: if this is me, who are you? And to add to the complexity, it is the John Wayne of "El Dorado" with a posse of friends and misfits to help him lead to the way to, not self-awareness, but self-transformation from one medium to another.
So if the Local Business is Stickles and not indie record stores, where does that leave the album itself? Two long songs, a couple of misfires, a handful of Titus Andronicus classics, all produced by Kevin McMahon for the third time -so much for their being no constants to Titus Andronicus besides PS. I once asked Kevin about producing Patrick and he told me that he does exactly what Patrick says and Patrick knows exactly what he wants to,,,
Lyrically, it is a strong stew of words all used to paint a disturbing vision of Patrick and the world around him. A befuddled rocker who got what he wanted and never really wanted it. There is a great deal of intimacy, built that much intimacy. Patrick writes about everything except his romantic life (he is the Punk Taylor Swift inverted). He keeps on saying this is me: Anna see how crazy I am? "I'M GOING INSANE". Wanna know how an eating disorder feels "SPIT IT OUT". But Anna know why I broke up with that chick in Boston? I don't think so…. It keeps on insisting upon revelation but only so far. So he keeps on saying stuff, and saying what his life is like, but not really. What you get is a rap like spillage of clashing words, but not clashing images, the words paint a state of being but not a state of place or even time. It is so inner it watches bemused at the outer. "My Eating Disorder" is almost Plato like in its separation of body from soul.
The music is hardbroiled punk pop, which, again like Fucked Up, is based around the stickiest melodies of all time. It sounds really really good, it sounds really great. Even its weakest song, "(I Am The) Electric Man" sounds great. And while there is nothing as singularly great and simple as "…And Ever", it skirts with greatness. "Ecce Homo", "Hot Deuce On A Silver Platter", "In A Big Country" are as great as rock and roll greats, great tunes, great punks, bitch of a tude, enormous songs. Both of the long ones, "My Eating Disorder" and "Tried To Quit Smoking", are excellent. He hits the 8 minute mark in stride though I've met Stickles several times and am pretty sure he doesn't smoke. "it is not that I do not love you, it's just that I hate everyone"? I wouldn't take that at face value either. " Behold my brother's beautiful babies! It's obvious to see the world's been making plans to go on without me", Patrick sings on "Upon Viewing Oregon’s Landscape with the Flood of Detritus", the albums best lyric.
And everything to a hard, rollicking rock and roll and with Patrick's scrappy rasp leading the way.
So where's the kick? Perhaps there is nothing left Titus Andronicus can do but disappoint a little. Nothing is as great as "A Perfect Union", "The Battle Of Hampton Roads" or "…And Ever". Maybe that is a ridiculous high standard. This is a great great album, if it was their first album it would be the best of the year. But instead it is a little disappointing. Maybe, if this is a self-portrait, it is one where the problems of discovering your imminent mortality in Grievance, and changing your whole life direction in Monitor becomes what Stickles calls " the white man created existential angst when he ran out of other problems". How sorry or even concerned can you feel about Stickles hubris distaste for the rock and roll lifestyle? It's like that Nick Taylor memoir, you want all this and you want us to feel sorry for you?
Let's try a syllogism. There is a central problem in the songs. The singer loves a woman but…
He hates everybody
The woman is one of everybody
And therefore he hates the woman.
Or, and here we get to something central:
He hates everybody
He is one of everybody
Therefore he hates himself.
Then, taking off from these two realizations, is this: his nephews are there to replace him because he is going to die, and probably deserves to it, but whatever he does, when he looks at these two children, what he sees is his replacement. When I saw Louis CK two weeks ago he was referring to this exact point: he loves his children but they are there for one purpose only to be his replacement. So these are the anxieties that are the broad strokes of changing of his inner self from one medium to another.
And then there is another question not answered in his syllogism: there is zero difference between hating everybody and loving everybody. When it infects EVERYBODY, all that happens is the gradations change so in his extremeness his point is thrown out and Stickles transforms himself, from this wandering psycho killer to the lover, friend, brother named leader: he keeps say he is something else, but the music is making the opposite point about it. And between these two extremes, he paints himself into an artistic corner which only communion with fellow travelers can get him out of can get him out of.
Years ago I wrote that Titus Andronicus were the antithesis of nihilism. I still believe that, as the voices come together, as the sound insists upon you joining yours to his, his portrait is yours, is mine. It is a central Great American faith: It is me against the world, will you join me? Ambitious stuff and to his credit, Stickles immense gifts as a songwriter and as a person manages to pull it all together into a brilliant whole whose fault lines are like a woman with one green and one blue eye, a mutation on rocks greatest of dreams.
Grade: A