Patrick Stickles is a smart man, or, if he isn’t, he should be. The sort of intellectual nerve he threads through the music of Titus Andronicus is well vaunted and fearsome. Those live readings of Shakespeare and Camus from The Airing of Grievances, and the various speech extracts peppered throughout The Monitor (along with the overarching frame of the Civil War a.k.a. one of America’s bloodiest and most resonant soul-searching episodes) are not for show or flair.
Taking their name from a Shakespeare play—the most violent and absurd of the Bard’s work, I might add—this New Jersey outfit has made a name for itself as the most intense band of recent memory. They’re not the fastest or the loudest (by decibels), but they blister the way no well-oiled black metal band ever could.
And at the heart of their blistering Jersey caterwaul is a heavy dose of existential ethos. Chiefly, an ethos of existential nihilism. You’ve probably already met an existential nihilist at one point or another. You may be one. And if you’re on the fence, there’s probably a book along the lines of “So You Might Be An Existential Nihilist (Or Not).” But the basic premise of existential nihilism is that life has no inherent meaning, that every attempt to confront this vacuum is an encounter of the absurd machinations of our lives.
That’s a brief, drive-by summary, probably lacking, but it’s pertinent. It’s the main thought which drives their “No Future” series—songs on both The Airing of Grievances and The Monitor—and it’s one of the hallmarks of a decidedly punk nihilism. The Sex Pistols proclaimed no future too, though I doubt Johnny Rotten or Sid Vicious had much of an intellectual boner for the theoretical parts.
But if The Airing of Grievances is the Sissyphean clamor from the basement, and The Monitor is the rent and sputtering immolation of a nation—with every “why is this happening?” proffered and lost in the rifle cracks and cannon fire—what is Local Business?
Titus Andronicus has been basking in a lot of warmth and love since the critical success of The Monitor, but be warned: Patrick Stickles’ heart hasn’t grown three sizes. And on the best of Local Business, he still has the strength of ten Patrick Stickleses, plus two.
Take lead track “Ecce Homo” (Latin for “Behold the Man,” a trope in Christian art when Jesus Christ is presented by Pontius Pilate to the crowd for the Crucifixion). Right off the bat, Stickles proclaims the meaningless of the universe and endeavoring to die free. Behold the man, indeed.
“My Eating Disorder” is another potent example. It is one of the longer songs, and it’s worth every one of its eight minutes, seamlessly weaving eating disorders into an existential manifesto. It’s a thorny subject—what constitutes an eating disorder and how you’re supposed to deal with something as intractable as appetite and habit—but Stickles sticks to it, proclaiming magisterially, “I decide what goes inside my body.”
Then there’s lead single, “In A Big City.” Stickles is in fine form here, bemoaning that he’s “a drop in a deluge of hipsters,” but he refuses to be assimilated. As the music marches on, Stickles goes on to proclaim simultaneously crude and elegant self-affirmations like, “I don’t know much but I know which side’s buttered on my toast” and “I’m a dirty bum but I wipe my own ass.”
And the music! Local Business doesn’t approach the same levels of rawness or quickness as The Airing of Grievances or The Monitor. There’s no breakneck breakdown cum “Theme from ‘Cheers,’” but the arrangements are inspired—five guys, no frills, and a decided break, but it doesn’t feel like the band is pulling back at all.
Overall, the sound of Local Business is no-bull rock ’n’ roll, with a few diversions. Penultimate track “(I Am The) Electric Man” sounds kind of like a cover of a ’50s pop song, complete with a call and response by Stickles and associates. And last track, “Tried to Quit Smoking” is the most dirge-like song they’ve recorded thus far—with a guitar solo that laments more than it plays.
Compared to rest of Titus Andronicus’s back catalog, Local Business may feel less ambitious and less grasping, but it’s nothing less than compelling.
