It afflicts the entire concept of the big rock band, the arena rock band. I mean that the very essence of rock and roll is a blue collar truck driver, hopped up on diet pills, drivin' a big ol' truck and singing love songs to his Mama. And whatever happens after, it's just a sugar coating, it doesn't matter. Because rock and roll is that sound. It's Presley. Electricity in sweaty Southern miscegenated rock and roll clubs.
So the very idea of the big Arena bands, from the Stones to U2, is antithetical, it's besides the point, a marketing ploy.
And so sincere people sneer at it. It is beneath an indie rocker like Titus Andronicus leader Patrick Stickles even if he is the last person on earth capable of doing it.
Titus Andronicus are the greatest rock and roll band on Earth because they sound like the greatest rock and roll band in the world, but they are working class heroes. Patrick's brother is in the Armed Forces, his Mom is a former teacher, and, as detailed in TA's second album The Monitor, Patrick himself was a long miserable drive from Boston to Jersey away from joining that fate.
But he jumped his fate and now he is something else again and it is weird because as I have ears, if he had been around in the 1970s he'd have given Bruce Springsteen a run for greatest rock and roll heroe of all time.
For me, in 2012, Stickles is better than any one except Bruce on stage. I've seen Titus Andronicus quite a few times and it has always been the greatest rock and roll band in the world. Stickles is a magnetic stage presence and he can connect with 1000s of people with the same ease he connects to one. He is beyond sincere and, rather, he is completely real. His comfort level is alarming. It is like a private public exorcism by the fire of rock and roll. I hear he has been opening TA concerts with "The Boys Are Back In Town". It is hard to imagine a better match of bands… actually, no it isn't. TA are an E Street Band or a U2, a muscular boys own club of hard rock passion and frailty.
An it's the sound, of course. The sound is HUGE. It is a big sound rock band that Stickles claims Fucked Up have. Fucked Up do and don't, but Titus Andronicus OWN IT. This is what we love about America. It is the heartland, the 99%. Like Bruce, it isn't effortless, you can see the sinew and sweat, and like Bruce it isn't simply objective sromping: Stickles refracts EVERYTHING through his own self, it is the most self-consciously objective sound you can manage.
And it is Patrick's for the taking and I bet he doesn't bother taking it.
Here's the case against.
1. I have never seen Titus Andronicus as clearly uncomfortable on stage as opening for Vampire Weekend a couple of years. I've never seen their 'tude best defined as take it or leave it, before or since. A coupla years earlier, opening for Los Campesinos, in a much smaller room, he insisted upon a reaction and got it. It seemed to me, the size of the audience was putting him off. There was no reason Titus Andronicus couldn't blow Vampire Weekend off stage except one. PatricK didn't want to.
2. They are a male phenomena. My co-editor, Helen Bach, considers them a boys band and I don't at all. But, with exceptions, the women I've introduced them to haven't been keen. I think one reason is that scarecrow homeless look of his, and I think now he has shaved, young ladies will begin to respond.
3. I don't know if it is the bands record label or the band themselve, but this doesn't appear to be playing to the hinterlands. It doesn't appear to be being picked up by Middle America and it should be. Despite song titles like "Upon Viewing Brueghel's Landscapes", or just the bands name alone, they aren't elitists, but they somehow feel elitist. It might be the band themselves. Patrick had mentioned how XL had begged him for some shorter songs before the release of his second album. He didn't provide it!
4. Stickles is something of a moralist. A year ago I watched him lecture a Pogues audience about over-indulging in alcohol. On St. Patrick's Day. I swear this is true.The mind boggles. Needless to add, if you wanna rock the world, you've got to bend like fuck.
5. He is also an innocent. He tweeted about his buddy Kurt Vile leasing a song for a commercial. Vile's reply, that he needed the money to buy diapers for his child, stopped Patrick in his tracks. It is part of the business, but if it is part of the business Stickles despises, Then what?
So if he won't, doesn't have to, doesn't want it the way Springsteen did, nobody is gonna give it to him.
Regina Spektor is currently opening for Tom Petty. That's exactly where Titus should be if that's where they want to get to. Will they? Here is the case for:
1. When you write music writ large, you want an Arena to fill it with.
2. Patrick is a working class hero. He might not choose to be, but he has that charismatic one of us but apart from us. It just needs to be shared by enough people.
3. At some point, with the next album, Titus Andronicus need to reach the tipping point and they are gonna want to. You write music publicly to have it heard.
4. They have the songs, they have the band, they are where they need to be.
Do they want it?