This was the last night of Titus Andronicus Local Business tour and I have the tee shirt to prove it. The 46th concert in 43 days, a 1030pm set with Titus leader Patrick Stickles mother, sister and cousin in the house and the finishing end of a long hard slog before he returns to his Mom’s home in Glen Rock, New Jersey.
And it felt like the last night of 43 day tour.
It felt like the Knicks during the fourth game on a five night road trip. The band didn’t seem able to ignite.
I’ve seen the band many many times, so I judge them harsher than most people. if this was your first or even third time seeing Titus Andronicus you would have seriously gotten off, I got off but I expected that adrenaline rush only Titus Andronicus can provide and didn’t get it.
And it was mostly exhaustion for sure, but not only exhaustion. In 2010, Titus were a band for the ages and the inclusion of Amy Klein made them more than that: keyboards and violins, songs that would take an entire rehearsal to get down, and a sense of a band, of Patrick, overachieving, everything he touched turned to gold. But maybe that isn’t what Patrick wanted, he kept on claiming Titus were a punk rock band even though they were a hard rock band, and finally he reshaped it to be what it was. He stepped onstage wearing a Ceremony tee shirt. Ceremony are a pretty good LA punk band, but Trash Talk and Pissed Jeans would blow em off stage and Titus would blow all three off stage. I caught the tailend of Ceremony’s set and their claim to be exhausted seemed to ring true.
Titus opened with “Ecce Homo” and “Hot Deuce”, just like on album # 3 Local Business, and one thing is certain; this may well be the most powerful version of Titus ever. Both bassist Eric Harm and guitarist Liam Betson are magnificent beasts and are all over it, but something about Patrick seems a little bit a beat too slow. He has a perpetual scowl, and he seems to be not moving quite right, the next song, “My Time Outside The Womb” he offers to his family and I remember him doing the same thing in 2009 at the Whitney but… maybe it is me.
And having said that, it was a great set. Great. The audience lapped it up and lot’s of girls going crazy in the audience and for excellent reason, because clean shaven Stickles is a hardcore hunk, and because “You will always be a loser” and “Your life is over” crosses every denomination both fiscal, sexual and any other ill you can imagine. They connect. he sings both songs the lines come from and plays a terrific harmonica on the latter and the girls are screaming along.
The moshpit is subdued tonight (Ceremony’s was more vicious) but Titus isn’t a vacuous band and they don’t lend themselves to Neanderthal rituals (that’s not a put down of either Neanderthals or Titus, by the way). At the center of the bands vision is a community that transcends the meaningless of life. Life gets its meaning through other people. And this is much truer on stage than on record. The audience is a vision of a shared esthetics shouting down its irrelevance, its loserness, in the shared moment. If everyone is a loser, no one is a loser. That’s the point.
But Sunday night it is a point that Stickles seems not to be sharing.
Look, it is the greatest rock and roll band in the world, how bad can it be?
It could be much worse, but it could be better.
One more thing, I requested an interview with the band and was ignored. I would assume that that wouldn’t shade my judgement, but who knows?
Grade: B+