Titus Andronicus & The Will To Be The Ultimate Rock Band
On LP7, 'The Will To Live,' Titus Andronicus just wants to be a rock band. And That's! Oh! Kay!
The first question a friend asked when I informed them that Titus Andronicus’ new album The Will to Live had just come out—at 9pm Pacific Thursday the 29th, when the clock struck midnight in the distant-yet-connected Tri-State area, as I was needing and sipping a whiskey, a Constitution-defying three-term presidency away from the band’s seminal LP2—was the following:
“Does it sound more like The Monitor or any other Titus album?”
My gut reaction during that first passive listen via my phone’s weak speakers, texting and jamming out in joyous realization of an album I knew was coming but hadn’t been anticipating to come right then was this:
“No album will be like The Monitor. Titus Andronicus just wants to be a classic rock band. And I respect that.”
Now, after digesting the press Patrick Stickles has done surrounding the album rollout, I understand that the goal is more grandiose. Titus Andronicus doesn’t just want to be a classic rock band. They want to be the Ultimate Rock band. And that is more than okay.
“Ultimate Rock” is a genre Stickles coined which refers to the over-the-top, maximalist albums like AC/DC’s Back in Black or The Who’s Who’s Next, among others. Titus'’s post-2018 output has not abandoned the emo punk angst of their earlier work, but—in various formations evolving while revolving around leader Patrick Stickles, like Ultimate Rock band Boston did around Tom Scholz—has shifted toward more straightforward rock and roll. As a coveted “Pitchfork darling” in the early 2010s, Titus was almost too punk for the indie crowd, too indie for the punks. In stripping down their music to its purest essence—without making it subdued, and in fact doing the opposite—the band has settled into a sound somehow both timeless and befitting of their age and this current period of recorded music history. They are a rock band, ultimately.
Titus has never shied from embracing their influences in their lyrics with direct references, from the Springsteen comparisons that dogged them, to a degree, in their earlier career, to The Will to Live’s cover of 70s English punk band Cock Sparrer’s “We’re Coming Back.” The classic rock allusions are as clear as the punk ones, as ingrained within Stickles as A Productive Cough’s (and his arm’s) “Crass Tattoo.” That album’s “I’m Like A Rolling Stone” interpolates Dylan interpolating the folk canon, while shouting out the lineup of that still-ongoing band with the mouth logo named after the Muddy Waters song.
In a Consequence of Sound piece breaking down The Will to Live, Stickles rattles off specific songs and artists that influenced each track. “Dead Meat,” for instance, is a direct homage to Nirvana. “I Can Not Be Satisfied” on The Will to Live is again a riff on a Rolling Stones song, which was a riff on other songs. Thin Lizzy can be found in “Bridge and Tunnel,” which features vocals from the lead singer of Canadian Titus touring partners Partner. The breakdown is a pleasant and informative read that also has some quality song recommendations, like the late 1960s psychedelic and prog-influenced Japanese group Flower Travellin’ Band. Stickles is able to identify the threads of his own musicality that relate back to other artists both living and dead. As if music is one superorganism that continues on no matter what, like Earth itself.
In his quest to make the Ultimate Rock album, Stickles’ ultimate influence is—from outfit to attitude to showmanship—Lou Reed. “All Through The Night” takes its name from the Lou Reed song. “I Can Not Be Satisfied” ends with a drone that would make John Cale proud. Like his hero, Stickles is privy to the sensibilities of those that came before him, and unabashed in his pursuit of their rock and roll glory.
The Will to Live is dialed up to the maximum, and the Boston influence was evident before Stickles confirmed it. But the album’s narrative approach is not as maximalist as The Most Lamentable Tragedy’s, which uses 35-tracks to construct a five act rock opera about mental illness. The thematic throughlines on LP7 are not as easy to identify as on The Monitor, which is clearly and unavoidably about the American Civil War (and, in a different sense, about Stickles’ relationship to Boston, the city).
On my first passive listen, I thought maybe The Will to Live was about parenthood. The opening track, which features recordings of Stickles’ real cats manipulated into wails alongside a cacophony of other unpleasant noises, is called “My Mother Is Going To Kill Me.” The track “Baby Crazy”—the closest thing to a rap track Stickles has ever made, despite threatening to release a rap album over the years—has dense and complex lyrics that can be dissected in detail by those willing to read the scrolling text of the karaoke-style video. On first listen, though, it sounded like Stickles was losing his mind again, this time while trying to take care of a baby. It doesn’t help that the next song, “All Through The Night,” discusses something crying and crying (or calling?) for the amount of time the title suggests. There’s a lyric in “Baby Crazy” which summarizes my initial reaction to the album’s possible meanings: “The father is a concept that’s beyond my comprehension, but it’s one I gotta mention, cuz its influence is evident.” What does it mean? That Stickles had a baby and once again lost his mind?
It turns out Stickles didn’t have a baby, or at least hasn’t acknowledged as much, but did get married between this album and the previous album. The album isn’t written, 100% anyways, from Stickle’s point-of-view. Like another of his admitted influences, MF DOOM, Stickles embodies a fictional narrator on The Will to Live whose experiences closely relate to the author’s personal life. Like everyone on Mother Earth after the covid outbreak, Stickles went through a shitload of changes, was forced to confront mortality and destruction, endured grief, and came out with a renewed perspective on what it means to be a human on this planet, which keeps going whether or not we individually continue along with it. The narrator of The Will to Live goes through something similar, reacting personally to lofty themes like God and the Devil while pausing ever so often to bust out a much-needed guitar solo.
The terminology in the lyrics of The Will to Live are personal as always, but also—to go along with the maximalism of Ultimate Rock—of mythical, religious proportions. The stakes are higher. The attempt is more ambitious. How do you write about the end of the world—the most universal fear and reality—from a unique perspective? You make it personal, of course. Like Stickles being annoyed with traffic after witnessing someone die on 2012’s LP3 Local Business track “Upon Viewing Oregon's Landscape With The Flood Of Detritus,” the narrator of The Will to Live responds and reacts to the horrific realities of the cycle of life and death. In an interview with Vulture, Stickles explained the narrator’s arc and epiphany, which is: “coming to a grim realization of the violent brutality of the natural world.”
You wouldn’t be able to discern this from a quick listen to the track, or even closer repeated ones, but “Gray Goo” refers to a hypothetical thought experiment in which self-replicating nanobots end up covering Earth in the titular matter. “My Mother Is Going To Kill Me” is actually a way of saying that Mother Earth regularly creates life but also destroys it. “An Anomaly” has lyrics like, “It was God that made our bodies, it was the devil that made our minds... It was God that made the Devil.”
The band has come far from wanting to stagnate in senior year of college, and onto pontificating about what it means that death and violent destruction have become the human norm? When humans haven’t stagnated after reaching the top of the food chain, but instead have turned on each other? We’re no longer fighting for survival, Stickles mentioned in another interview, but now we’re fighting out of pure evil. The Will to Live is filled with bigger concepts than ever before, poking at the root of what makes humanity tick, and keep on ticking.
The album is also, of course, personal. “Give Me Grief” is about an occurrence that feels, to those who experience it, like the end of the world altogether: the death of a close friend and family member. In this case, the person who died was original Titus Andronicus keyboardist, and Stickles’ cousin, Matt “Money” Miller. In honor of their fallen friend, and in acknowledgement of the limited time we all have on the planet, the song features a verse from former Titus Andronicus member, and all around legend of the extended Titus Universe, Eric Harm. It is a great joy to hear him singing and watch him dancing on a rooftop to this song.
It is too early to make a proper assessment of the album, and so let me be clear that this was and is not a review. After listening on my phone speakers when the album came out, I listened again on a long drive from Burbank, where I live now, to West Adams, where I used to live. It was a fitting soundtrack to a nostalgia-filled ride, as Titus Andronicus is a nostalgia-inducing band, even as they carry on in present day. Titus lyrics have always emphasized the importance of location on one’s wellbeing. You can hear Stickles being miserable in Boston, or being proud of New Jersey. Moving from one side of the river to the other to become a drop in a deluge of hipsters. For a long ride through a city I’ve called home for a long time, on the opposite coast from Titus and too far from my actual home, this was, like classic rock tends to be, an impeccable road trip soundtrack.
While the theme and messaging of The Will to Live take longer to suss out than other Titus works, Stickles’ explanations of his intent give the music a heightened context. Plus the music alone can carry the album. “(I’m) Screwed” is catchier than any song they’ve made in years. I would write more but I’m actually falling asleep while writing this so I’m just going to do a sharp cutoff. Probably forgot to mention a lot of stuff, or give a thoughtful review, but hey at least we got this far.