Review: Titus Andronicus @ the Bowery

While the band certainly boasts many of the punk elements and sounds that makes fans want to careen into one another, the music in the live setting, as on the album, is manically eclectic with influences ranging from Black Flag to Buddy Holly to Bruce Springsteen and Neutral Milk Hotel. Introducing The Monitor’s A More Perfect Union, Stickles takes a cue from the Rivers Cuomo playbook of pithy references to ’70s hard rock bands, casually declaring, “In the immortal words of Cheap Trick this next song is the first track on our new album”.*

As The Monitor is an album loosely based on a Civil War battle**, tonight it is General Stickles leading the charge, serenading his band with a cover of The Replacements’ Treatment Bound and shredding the neck of his Gibson ES335 on the post-apocalyptic No Future Part II. Songs like Richard II and Titus Andronicus are played fast and frantic, packing a potent mixture of searing shoegaze and punk along with power-pop riffs and raucous chorus lines. Amy Klein’s violin adds a layer of folky Aaron Copeland-esque Americana to a number of songs including the powerful, 14-minute Battle of Hampton Roads, while drummer Eric Harm made sure the arrangements stayed air-tight throughout the night’s genre-blurring setlist. Whereas many indie bands have fallen into oblivion after delivering promising debut albums, Titus Andronicus’ powerful live show suggests they won’t be abandoning the scene any time soon.

*- See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zhul9E6arw
** – Specifically, The USS Monitor is a destroyed, sunken battleship that helped successfully defend the Union fleet in the aforementioned Battle of Hampton Roads, but was later lost in stormy sea swells off the coast of Cape Hatteras

Titus Andronicus
Bowery Ballroom
2010.03.08

A Pot In Which To Piss, Upon Viewing Bruegel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”, A More Perfect Union, Joset of Nazareth’s Blues, Richard II, Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, New Jersey, No Future Part Three: Escape from No Future, Titus Andronicus, My Time Outside The Womb, The Battle Of Hampton Roads, …And Ever, Four Score And Seven, Treatment Bound*, No Future Part II: The Day After No Future

*The Replacements

Titus Andronicus continue their tour tonight with a show at 529 in Atlanta, GA which wraps with a “hometown” sold out show on April 24 at Maxwell’s in Hoboken before they head overseas for a string of European dates.