It's surprising, to me at least, that
The Monitor wasn't immediately one of my favorite albums of the already jam-packed year in music. Patrick Stickles' wavering, drunken voice sends a message of letting go and being free of your own demons, of looking in the mirror and seeing exactly what is there and accepting that hard truth of life. This all sounds great to me, especially at this exact point in my life as I've just turned 21 and thrown caution to the wind. I feel what Stickles feels; lost but not gone, a loser in a time where being a winner is all that counts, a wallflower of sorts. But this wallflower is screaming from the sidelines and will be heard, come hell or highwater. And it's this relation, this connection I feel with Stickles' introspective lyrics and the backing bands' loud and dynamic music that sounds and seems like a perfect fit for this crucial time in my life.
The Monitor is an album to shout along with, intoxicated or not, an album to live with and represent these trying times in our world.
Unfortunately, Titus Andronicus profoundly screw it all up. The manner in which Stickles performs his lyrical prowess is engaging to say the least, yet
The Monitor just doesn't seem to fit with Stickles overwhelming message. I expected music to blow me away when I first read what Stickles was talking about; music that would brutally leave me in a river of honest and relieving tears. Titus Andronicus just can't simply measure up to the hugeness of Stickles's presence and
The Monitor falls flat because of it. Rest assured, Titus' long, drawn out indie punk-ish soundscapes sound like a marvelous playground for Stickles to work with, but after a few or so listens the album never lives up to the universal message. It's not
big enough to hold Stickles; it's long at times, sure, but that's not really a fair characteristic of immensity and epic, and at points the album loses itself in its own pointless length, like the incredibly repetitive "No Future Part Three: Escape From No Future" where Stickles' whine is bogged down by foggy repeated guitar lines and no soul whatsoever.
There are some winners however, as "Four Score And Seven" comes astonishingly close to the mountaintop where Stickles resides as his screams of
"no you won't be laughing so hard" comes in such a rush that you're literally taken back by Stickles' passionate yells. It's clearly a highlight of the album as the other band members chime in to join Stickles in a triumphant display of emotion. The life-assuring diary of "The Battle Of Hampton Roads" is another peak where the song builds and builds to a haunting and brooding conclusion of the repeated line
"please don't ever leave" under truly heartfelt horns. It's these scattered moments that keep
The Monitor afloat but there's just not enough of them to go around. There are hints of songwriting brilliance that are just simply overshadowed by pointless indulgences into anthemic territory.
While this could have been a big, big stepping stone into otherworldly territory,
The Monitor ultimately never lives up to Patrick Stickles' generation-defining lyricism and knack for emotion. The music behind him is at times timid and even contradicts Stickles' message; for every line about acceptance and understanding, Titus Andronicus ironically don't understand how to measure up to Stickles' power and can't seem to accept restraint and focus. What a giant letdown.
