Titus Andronicus are storyteller’s in the classic mode of Homer or the Boss. Their brutally honest and often soulfully punk songs reflect a much deeper investment in both their music and their message - they choose to focus on substance over image; so it is with that certain sensibility that their debut, The Airing of Grievances (2008) is such a spectacularly arcane yet entirely new take on the punkrock wayfarer. The album is a collection of tight yet smart and wide songs, treading away from colloquial alternative boorishness and finding a happy medium in a much more matured but still fun place—Titus are a party band, but that doesn’t detract from their expertly crafted rock mini-epics and artistically prose-like lyricism. Songs like “Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, N.J.” and “Arms Against Atrophy” reflect shades of the Fall, the E Street Band, Son House, X, Paul Westerberg, and so many others because Titus Andronicus imbue such an importance to each note and each unified call and response; they create a modern American alternative masterpiece in a time when few, if any bands, have risen to pick up the mantle set before them by their influences. But on The Airing of Grievances, Titus Andronicus do anything but complain about this challenge; rather, they wholeheartedly accept it as their need and duty, and they deliver on that promise.
Listen to “Upon Viewing Brueghel’s “Landscape With the Fall of Icarus””
Download “The Airing of Grievances“
