Send "Titus Andronicus " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Sputnikmusic |
 I have a very specific picture in my head of Patrick Stickles, one that is reinforced every single time I listen to The Airing Of Grievances: he is in an apartment that is dull and empty save for the chair he is sitting in and an almost empty bottle at his feet. There is one single window through which he can see every injustice and lie and slight in this world. More important than that, though, is what you cannot see in this picture: the people in the neighboring apartment are playing music. They are playing exactly what Stickles has always wanted to hear. But they are not playing a soundtrack to what goes on outside his window, nor are they are playing a soundtrack to combat it. They are simply playing. No agenda, no ego. And for his part, Stickles is screaming along, alone in his tiny apartment but a part of something, and, like a Polaroid in reverse, the window fades away and the chair fades away and the bottle fades away and the walls fade away until there is nothing but these young gentlemen singing and playing long into the night.This is not solely because of Stickles's lyrics or the general attitude of Titus Andronicus's music. No, mostly I get this image in my head because of the production on The Airing Of Grievances. Stickles simply sounds separate from the rest of the band, as if he is singing along to a recording of the music rather than fronting the band with a guitar of his own. At first, this seemed to make the album disjointed, as if vocalist and band were two entirely separate entities pasted together. But there is a sort of jovial enmity there in the sense that the music is constantly at war with itself, each sound vying for dominance but never quite achieving it, and in that way, working together. And of course there is Stickles - part charismatic frontman, part bearded freak, part motivational speaker, part existential problem in a bottle - in the middle of it all, doing his best to fight the demons outside his window by fighting the demons inside his mind. Through the distorted fuzz he is there with street-performer panache, with preacherman persuasion, spouting introspective insights, searing judgments, and common-man philosophies fitting for these modern times. Never has there been a band quite like Titus Andronicus; that is, there's never been a band that has shouted an axiom so loudly, adhered to a tenet so mightily as they do to the fact that life is just too fucking short for all this bullshit. Other bands have shouted this too, of course, but none of them have turned it into a creed as Titus Andronicus have, never has it seemed like such a call to arms to stop being such a waste, and it is also a reassurance that you don't need to make a lot of money to do so, that by getting together with people and simply being, you've spent a night well. Such conviction, such flesh-and-bones realness is what music should always be. The Airing Of Grievances is not about anything so much as it is for everything - the beauty of life, the tragedy of life wasted, the looming of death and the desire to go out having lived fully - no, it is not about those things at all, it is for those things, it is a collection of songs written as odes to the gritty and the beautiful and the mixing of the two: our world, our sick world. This album is a constant reminder that you can love your country without being blinded by it, that you can die penniless but absolutely happy, that the political is always personal, and that being a part of the crowd is not a bad thing if you've found something worth following....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| Before writing the bulk of his legendary canon of plays and sonnets, William Shakespeare penned the charmingly flawed revenge tragedy Titus Andronicus. Due to its laughable bombast and over-the-top violence, its influence on contemporary culture has emerged mainly in dark comedies like Sweeney Todd or "South Park", and many Shakespeare scholars still balk at seriously analyzing the work. Of course, all these factors make the play a perfect moniker for an indie band as violent, overblown, and irreverent as Glen Rock, New Jersey's Titus Andronicus. Despite its title's implied politeness, The Airing of Grievances qualifies more as existentialism wrapped in an anti-suburban screed. Frontman Patrick Stickles howls with anguish way beyond his 22 years, often cramming lyrics into tight spaces just to make sure he gets the last word in. Plus, as anyone who's heard five seconds of this band already knows, he sounds like Conor Oberst screaming from the bowels of hell. However, to peg these guys as "emo" would be sadly inaccurate. Sure, torn diary page scribbles clutter Airing's heart-on-sleeve, fist-in-air anthems, but the drama's more Boss than Bright Eyes, fueled by blue collar frustration and, most notably, beer. So far Titus's rowdy live shows have generated the most buzz around the group; check your local listings, they're probably playing in a friend's tool shed near you. Those small venue acoustics translate wonderfully on the band's debut, its muffled mixing reminiscent of listening to a bar band from the men's room. Yet this inebriated aesthetic only intensifies the literary streak running through Stickles' easily excitable veins. A brusque "fuck you!" cues the band on Pogues-like opener "Fear & Loathing in Mahwah, NJ", but once the rubble clears it's a villainous quote from Titus Andronicus's Aaron the Moor that most elegantly expresses Stickles' bile: "I have done a thousand dreadful things/ ...And nothing grieves me heartily indeed/ But that I cannot do ten thousand more." As if the dreary title and playful, mock-optimistic guitar riffs of "No Future Part II: The Day After No Future" aren't enough to wrench your soul, the song ends with the closing passage from Albert Camus' The Stranger, in which the narrator wishes to be jeered by a large crowd on the day of his execution....full text |
| Bogcritics |
| Shakespeare’s bloodiest, most aggressive work is a play called Titus Andronicus. It is about a Roman general swept up in a cruel cycle of retribution with the Queen of the Goths, Tamora. Shakespeare’s work is often considered a piece of exploitation or sensationalism by some scholars, with revenge as the prime motivation and brutality as a key theme. While this may be a simplistic reading of Titus Andronicus, the notions of chaos and violence from it have certainly proven to be popular among many other works of art. New Jersey five-piece Titus Andronicus not only shares a name with Shakespeare’s play but also shares the frenetic and violent energy of the production. Led by vocalist and guitarist Patrick Stickles, the band is based out of Glen Park and plays with the reckless abandon felt in early punk rock history. With Ian Graetzer on bass, Andrew Cedermark on guitar, Ian O’Neil on guitar and Eric Harm on drums, the band rounds out to a fine collective of madmen. The Airing of Grievances, perhaps as fitting a title for a debut possible for these hooligans, is a nine track tempest of deformation, uproar, conceit, noise, and ache. There is a sense of transparency here that is so often lacking in modern bands. It is as though Stickles and Co. have conjured up the spirit of punk rock and welded it together with nails and elements of low-fi to craft a murky, cluttered structure. The production of The Airing of Grievances has a certain squalid quality, almost as though you’re catching Titus Andronicus through the clamour of a teeming bong-filled college bash or trying to steal a look through the dusted windows of a back alley dive to figure out just who in the hell is rocking so hard. With the energy of high schoolers trying speed for the first time, The Airing of Grievances bursts into existence with a bulge of garish posturing and just the right amount of muck. In the wrong hands, such a combination would be magnificently bothersome. But in the hands of these five musical vagabonds, the approach is downright masterful....full text |
Titus Andronicus lyrics
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