Titus Andronicus - The Airing Of Grievances

Every token gesture and cliché that the debut effort from this New Jersey quintet comes out with, it manages to pull off. And then some. From the opener ‘Fear And Loathing In Mahwah, NJ’ you know you are in for a rough but enjoyable ride. Titus Andronicus kick off with some brilliant tinny production, a very Conor Oberst vocal and a guitar riff that sounds like the world is caving in. The sound of Spector’s wall of sound caught mid way between grunge and shoegaze then gives way for a bit of grandiose behaviour with some needless guitar twiddling and a bombastic display of horns and percussion; And this is all in the first track. ‘My Time Outside The Womb’ is a 100mph rough and ready account of life from start to finish. Beginning with the hope of “the first thing you see is the light” and closing with the realisation of being “just another book on the shelf”.

The album continues in a rich vein of intellectual punk with frighteningly personal but often comical references. So it goes, that the album appears exactly as the play from which the band takes their name. Dark humour and intellect overshadowed by volume and violence. Although throughout Patrick Stowles could just be doing an impression of Conor Oberst with extreme anger problems there are times that the songs themselves sound like MCR covering Bruce Springsteen. For those of you who are about to stop reading, contrary to what you might think the aforementioned mix actually sounds very good. With every song starting at the crescendo thanks to screaming vocals, very few wait more than a couple of bars before unveiling their killer riff, and even fewer show any sort of change in tempo. This is an all out smash and grab for the intellect, the references to literature and TV are thinly veiled but still fun to spot in the aftermath once this album has blown you well and truly out of the water.