“I have done a thousand dreadful things, as willingly as one would kill a fly, and nothing grieves me heartily indeed, but that I cannot do ten thousand more.”
These are the words Patrick Stickles reads over the mourning tones of “Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ,” the folk-stomper-cum-punk-rocker that introduced Titus Andronicus to the world. These words aren’t his, as they were actually written by another respected bard hundreds of years ago, but they’re the words Stickles used to define his band, a gang of indie rock rebels poised to take over the Frequency this Saturday.
There are so many things that can be pulled from that phrase, the dramatic dying monologue of Shakespeare’s Aaron the Moor in his bloodied tragedy, “Titus Andronicus.” Stickles’ music is about a plagued man, a man who hates the world around him, a man who’s hyper-literate and a man who expects the same from his listener. And that’s without reading into the actual details.
For those who don’t know, Titus Andronicus is a rarity. They’re the type of band to bloat an album with references to everything from Albert Camus and Bruce Springsteen to, obviously, William Shakespeare. These are the guys who released an album of millennial angst based on the Battle of Hampton Roads, where references to Springsteen and “Cheers” mix with Union battle hymns and William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator.
It’s a background that, honestly, might be off-putting to a casual listener who knows next to nothing about French absurdism and Shakespearean tragedy (like me), but what Titus Andronicus tackles with their depression, religion, American dreams, American defeatism and so much more going on behind each crackling guitar and rumbling beat.
And beyond that, you’ve got an array of rockers who know their craft. Over four albums, Titus Andronicus has built a catalog of burning rock songs and sprawling epics. It’s a catalog of metropolitan anthems like “In a Big City,” Thin Lizzy pub soundtracks like “Fatal Flaw,” Springsteenian pop rock on speed like “Fired Up” and shoegaze-scorched climaxes like “The Battle of Hampton Roads.” The Monitor’s penultimate track is drenched in guitar solos, feedback and the bagpipes of a funeral march.
Titus Andronicus is currently on tour in support of their latest album, The Most Lamentable Tragedy. That album doubled down on the classic rock Titus Andronicus warmly embraced on all of their other records. It was also the weirdest and boldest album they ever released, with pop rockers sharing spaces with religious chants, Irish dirges and a six-minute death song played only on an accordion. It was a disparate, two-faced look at Stickles’ mania, and it was beautifully discordant at its worst. At its best, it was a rock ’n’ roll fantasy.
Titus Andronicus will take the stage at the Frequency this Saturday, Oct. 10. They’re supported by southern psych punks Spider Bags (a band christened “greatest band in the world” by Stickles himself) and New York’s scuzzy rockers Baked.
