There is this story, it might be from the Bible, I really can’t remember where I first heard it, where it was one late Sunday afternoon, maybe a month after Jesus had changed water into wine, and JC and his disciples are wandering around Galilee, playing kick the can, killing time, a rare break from the relentless pace of Christ’s last three years on Earth and theguys were enjoying just hanging, -when a young man in his early 20s comes running up them . “Are you Jesus from last month’s wedding?” the man asks. “Can you help us? We’ve run out of wine, my bride is in tears, the reception is going to the devil… ” Jesus is about to demur but the disciplines push him a little and he thinks to himself “any time you can stick it to Satan…” so he shrugs and accepts and he goes to the wedding reception and the the guests come to JC one by one and he turns their water into wine one by one, and after a coupla hours everybody is trashed and Jesus and his disciples make for the exit and the bridegroom says goodbye and thanks Jesus: “Man, you are the best. You could make a career doing that. Thank you very very much.”
So the 13 men are walking away and Judas sidles up to Jesus and whispers in his ear: “Lord, I don’t get it…You just performed one of the greatest miracles the world will ever see, and the recipient isn’t even impressed, how is that possible?”
“Do something once, you’re God on Earth.” Jesus explained to his head disciple. “Do something twice, you’re a liquor distributor.”
I mention this story because it expresses my problems with Patrick Stickles and his band Titus Andronicus –it is a problem I have with many bands but it is more acute with Titus Andronicus because I loved them more. From 2009 to 2011, every time I saw them they were Gods, the greatest rock and roll band on earth, and I forgave them everything and anything, because the energy and smarts they brought to rock was unqualified brilliance: a sort of literate glower of sound. Bruce Springsteen meets the Clash meets William Manchester, with all the vigor of hardcore and all the anthems of U2. It is like they were everything great about rock put in one energized ball of fire and exploded. If the boys school tribulations of collegiate The Airing Of Grievances seemed insular, the follow up, The Monitor didn’t at all.
That was great and then Patrick did something just as great. Remember when Cold War Kids told the moshing frat boys at the front of the T5 that they had the wrong idea and to let girls in to enjoy the band? Patrick did the same thing by including Amy Klein as violinist. That Titus Andronicus, the 2010-2011, Titus Andronicus, were the greatest rock and roll band in the world. They were so inclusive, Patrick was like an arms opened wide for all the weirdos. If the 2008-2009 roared his lack of satisfaction, the 2010-2011 used it to out Bruce, Bruce., to turn water into win. The ragtag, bobbed up riot grrrl was a visual nit musicial counterpoint to the rest of the band, and the rest of the band? It was taking them an entire rehearsal to learn a single song at the time, The Monitor’s big, lovely, powerful honest rev and honest roar of rock and were so good…
The problems began with a mistake, when Amy quit, they needed to replace her with a woman. The band was so testerone fueled it suddenly became sexually segregated. The lesson of UK 77 –of Ari Upp, of Siouxie, Lora Logic and Poly Styrene and the rest of X Ray Specs specifically, is rock works better with women. And while Patrick is about Patrick, he is better when he included women in. The Titus of 2012 was simply too male.
Which brings me back to the God versus Man: this is true of everyone, it is true of Bethany’s new album, when you write music about yourself, you are changing yourself into a myth and Patrick has spent years now being a man god: he lets you in to join him in screaming about ordinariness on extraordinary songs, but he himself is not one of you.
For me, in 2010, Patrick and Titus Andronicus were a mythic rock and roll band: a perfect thing. They seemed able to do no wrong and when they stopped being that thing we were like children viewing our parents frailities for the first time. Or I was. I overreacted. I didn’t hate them but they fell to earth with the pounding of first Amy leaving and next Local Business.
Patrick’s story is interesting and obvious; this is from my interview with him in 2010: “My father was a lawyer, he is now a Catholic school teacher, my mother is a student’s assistant councilor for a High School. She is almost like a therapist where students can discuss their feelings and their problems. And my step-mother teaches third grade.” His brother was in the armed forces.
Compare this with the blue collar Bruce Springsteen’s father and it explains Local Business and the waiting and also myth in the making fourth album The Most Lamentable Tragedy Of Titus Andronicus(yes, the official Shakespearean plays title!): middle class children are less money oriented then poor kids. Local Business was a bad career move, and not Patrick’s first: dissing Kurt Vile for selling a song for a commercial (Vile’s reply: he has to buy diapers for his baby), reaming the Pogues for ignoring them when they opened at T5 (Spider’s reply: ridiculously naïve, he planned to catch em in New Orleans), and, of course, holding out for three years before releasing any new material at all. Commercial suicide is more important if you care about commercial success. A furious twitter, a loquacious talker and a wordy wordsmith, opiniated and bright and angry… Stickles doesn’t care about money even if artistic success is his currency.
Like I said, money matters more to the poor, to the Jay Z’s and the Bruce’s then to the middle class, the Lou’s and the Patrick’s. There is a stoic disconnect between what Titus Andronicus think they are doing and what they are actually do and indeed, what they actually are. they think they’re this terrific indie punk band but what they are is this terrific maibnstream rock band who won’t play by the rules.
Patrick is too the complete songwriter to sell himself as anything less, he isn’t Fucked Up. I once ran into Patrick at a Fucked Up gig, and we didn’t agree about the band. I like Fucked Up fine, they are a melodic hardcore band, and they have at least one great album to their names, but Stickles writes circles round them. The only rock band who can compete with Titus Andronicus are Spider Bags on record and Pissed Jeans on stage, but neither combined are the equal of Titus Andronicus. One of only two times I’ve been disappointed with the band live (and I’ve seen them countless times), was opening for Vampire Weekend at United palace, Stickles was completely on the defensive with the audience who would have loved them if he’d let them. It is like he was consistently worried about selling out when there is nothing there that could be construed as a sell out for one second.he seemed scared to be compromised.
It is part of the myth: on the new album we don’t merely get “No Future Part I”, we get “No future Part IV” and “No Future Part V, and we get “More Perfect Union”: it is an overreaching ambition, but ambition like Jesus where he doesn’t bargain for success (for what Peter Holsapple, another middle class kid, once called “the same old played out stuff”) but for life eternal. He calls himself a punk rocker because he plays on the same turf, but he doesn’t write like a punk rocker: he writes like a Bruce or a Bono, he is the real successor to those great bands so far past their prime. If he wanted it, Patrick is the God of classic anthem rock. No one else can do it.
But it isn’t what he wants, it is like a bizarre betrayal of an ethic that doesn’t exist. When you buy a ticket to Titus Andronicus’ gig in July at Shea Stadium not only is it only $11.35 INCLUDING HANDLING FEES, a percentage of it goes to charity and you get to choose what type of charity to send it to. This is ethics but to what end: where does it connect backwards to Patrick?
And what do we make of the new album? For one thing, as The Monitor producer Kevin McMahon, once told me, Stickles makes every decision about the sound: it will be his new testament. For another thing, the new single, “Dimed Out” is great, a melodic anthem, a myth of Patrick specialty, as Alyson noted a couple of days. It doesn’t feel like a move forward, but if it is treading water, it is standing on the shoulders of giant songs and maintaining its balance.
So what next for Stickles? The album, the tour, the more of the same. I could see him chucking it, it wouldn’t surprise me. I could see him finishing college, becoming a novelist or a teacher, succumbing to his debilitating eating disorder (Stickles even wrote a song about that)…. Or he might break pop and then what would he do? All he needs is the right licensing deal… Mission Impossible could use some of this thump and blister stuff.
But whatever happens, we will never appreciate Patrick the way we should: once you’ve turned water into wine, what do you do for an encore? A 30 track rock opera?
Tracklist:
1. The Angry Hour
2. No Future Part IV: No Future Triumphant
3. Stranded (On My Own)
4. Lonely Boy
5. I Lost My Mind
6. Look Alive
7. The Magic Morning
8. Lookalike
9. I Lost My Mind
10. Mr. E. Mann
11. Fired Up
12. Dimed Out
13. More Perfect Union
14. [Intermission]
15. Sun Salutation
16. (S)HE SAID/(S)HE SAID
17. Funny Feeling
18. Fatal Flaw
19. Please
20. Come On, Siobhán
21. A Pair Of Brown Eyes
22. Auld Lang Syne
23. I’m Going Insane (Finish Him)
24. The Fall
25. Into The Void (Filler)
26. No Future Part V: In Endless Dreaming
27. [Seven Seconds]
28. Stable Boy
29. A Moral