Review Summary: I'd be nothing without you, my darling. Please don't ever leave
When I was in high school, nobody tried in gym. And the least likely people to try were the "cool" kids. If I scored a floor hockey goal, it wasn't cool, it was lame. If you were in a floor hockey league, though, people probably would try. It's not that floor hockey wasn't cool, it was that "trying in gym" wasn't cool.
You live with your parents under their *complete* power and supervision from day 0 until day before you start college. Overnight, this completely changes and your parents go from 100.0% to 0.0%. You spend 4 years getting a degree, and then you get a job. If you spent 3 years, or 5, or didn't get a job afterwards, it would be weird. Those close to you would likely try to intervene to get you back onto the path.
These conventions that permeate high-income suburban American life are sometimes a bit weird, and all of them are hyper-conservative: follow this path outlined for you. Do Step A, then B, then C. After high school, you want to go to one of these specific colleges. Their order of rank is 1, 2, 3, etc.
If you stray from this "life is a path" mentality, you are viewed as weird. The reason for this is because the people who stray from the path often are ***ups who would've lived better on the path. But the path mentality is so ingrained in this world that even when non-***ups stray, they're still scolded. If you're pursuing some other life than the path, something must be wrong. Get back on.
When I graduated college and got a job, I entered a fairly competitive industry. Mostly smart people who mostly work pretty hard. However, the path mentality still dominated. There were more steps now, and they were more difficult, but it was the same ***. There were very few people who could see the big picture. "What is the point of this path? Are there other paths?". These types of questions are barely considered, and would never ever be lived. Quit your job? Could set you behind for years. Don't get married? You won't be able to find a good partner after age 40. The concerns are valid, the risks are real. But without pain, there can be no joy.
The Monitor is a personal manifesto against the path mentality. For Patrick Stickles, life is about trying, thinking, loving, crying, losing, and winning.
I have listened to a lot of music during the last 5-6 years since I began seriously listening to music. The Monitor is in a category of its own. It is the only album that I feel allegiance to. I feel bad about thinking Abbey Road or My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy or In the Aeroplane over the Sea as "perfect albums". What did those albums know about the world? The only other music that has the true emotion this record has usually come out of uniquely personal situations. Patrick Stickles' emotion isn't uniquely personal. It is from a fundamental recognition of how life can be lived, and the intense frustration with watching how it currently is being lived instead. It is an anthem in sound, spirit, and in reality. The Monitor is the chronicle of one man who has chosen to live. The poetry alone is enough to bring you to tears, but combined with the music and the personality, you have the most incredible piece of music you will ever hear in your life.
The Monitor is presented as a concept album about the Civil War, and it kind of is. The war is twofold: 1) a war between path mentality and non-path. 2) a personal struggle of Stickles'. On the one hand, he can betray everything he cares about to live the life others' want him to live. Or, he can live his truth. But he will be disappointing those around him and actively betraying them. Nobody will think he's cool, and nobody will like him. But he will like it. There are good reasons for each side, and Stickles chronicles his own struggle.
On song 3, No Future Part Three, Stickles describes not liking high school very much and numbing himself to his surroundings. "Yes I have surrendered what made me human and all that I thought was true. And now there’s a robot that lives in my brain and he tells me what to do." He has chosen to "fit in" and trying to live the way others want. This is the first 50% of the song. The second half is the exact opposite; rather than trying to fit in, he fantasizes an alternate universe where a different version of himself didn't. That alternate version is locked in a dungeon, miserable. He screams every night. People think he's a loser. But he is living. In the basement he screams, "You will always be a loser man, and that's ok".
Song 4, Richard II. This is the harshest Stickles gets towards the stewards of "path life". "Of course you have never been to blame for the various horrible things that you did". What is mainly being critiqued in this song is "denying humanity". If you are not living, loving, trying, failing, you're not being human. Stickles viciously attacks this type of thinking in the last words of the song, some of my favorite on the album: "May you endure every indignity knowing all the while life will go on. And when it ends may you have nothing to say except that it took too long. And may I be there somehow asking “Where are all of your friends now?” I think this fits very well with the theme for the 2nd half of the album which isn't so much people who are "living" vs. those just going with the motions. It's more about Stickles' inner-struggles with trying to achieve greatness.
The Monitor is very clearly trying to be something more than just the 2nd album from a band nobody has ever heard of. This is a very personal effort from a vulnerable man. In all interviews about the record, including the fabulous documentary on YouTube about the making of this album, Stickles has clearly given his life to this album. A lifetime of careful observing has shaped his worldview and he feels so strongly about it that he wants to make anthemic songs/statements about it. But the music still needs to be composed and recorded. These songs are sprawling, gigantic, nontraditional songs that are *all* crafted perfectly. Stickles wants this album to be great, and he's killing himself to achieve it. This album very easily could've sucked. And he knows that. Making a record that might kill you, and everyone hates it is part of the reason that the victories can be so sweet. Only someone who knows defeat can truly enjoy it. All of this emotion comes through on the record.
Song 5, A Pot in which to Piss. A beautiful song that legitimately and intelligently, and earnestly debates the meaning of life. This is not some half baked Joe Rogan podcast "woah like life is crazy man". This is a dude that has read Camus and is logically concluding that not much in life matters. What does "mattering" even mean? But what makes this record such a triumph is how accurately Stickles describes the human condition, and how he *chooses* to try his best and make himself completely vulnerable. "I’ve been called out, cuckolded, castrated, but I survived. I am covered in urine, and excrement, but I’m alive. And there’s a white flag in my pocket never to be unfurled". It's hard for me to describe how beautiful I think this line is. The first 80% of the song is about literally getting your head stuck in a flushing toilet unwillingly. The album is nominally about the civil war. Stickles combines the two in a way that would usually be a joke but is just completely earnest here, and he's choosing to look optimistically at the situation and march on.
Song 7, Theme from Cheers. This song imagines Stickles living out an entire "path life". Going to the local bar, drinking, working a job. I'm reminded of Good Will Hunting. There's nothing wrong with this life. Stickles' friends are doing it. It's just not for him. "I need a timeout, I need an escape from reality. Or else I need eternal darkness and death, I need an exit strategy. Down in North Carolina I could’ve been a productive member of society. But these New Jersey cigarettes and all they require have made a ***ing junkie out of me". He can't finish the song out though, as he thinks if he was to live this life it would just be a waste of time. At the end of the imagined life he's asking himself "What the *** was it for anyway?". He wants to live a life where he doesn't just slowly die going to the same old bar. He wants to be carried out in a stretcher.
I think the Civil War fits well with this album because it happened during a time where people on both sides were willing to go to war for their beliefs. It's irrelevant for this point who is right and wrong and what the issues are. It's just that believing in something so much that you're willing to fight for it is admirable. And it seems like that attitude is less and less common every day. I think that Stickles (and I) both have a respect for that attitude of putting it all on the line, of fighting for your beliefs, and doing anything required even if it means danger.
The record finishes with The Battle of Hampton Roads. This song was hyped when the album first came out mainly because it is really long. Just because someone makes a 14 minute song does not mean it is good. This song is a nice summary of the album that comes before, and it almost stands on its own. I think the ideas in the album are profound yet simple and they are explained quite succinctly. Songs repeat themes and each one is not necessarily needed for bringing up new ideas, some of the songs are just plain awesome. The Battle of Hampton Roads is the best.
The third paragraph Stickles basically outlines the thesis of the album "Is there a human alive that can look themselves in the face without winking, or saying what they mean without drinking, or believing something without thinking what if “somebody doesn’t approve?”
Is there a soul on this earth that isn’t too frightened to move?" It's not only accusatory but it's also somewhat inspiring. I feel like the next line should be "let's ***ing move!" Stickles throughout the song chronicles his own moves from New Jersey --> Boston --> New Jersey.
What's so great about this song (and album) is that Stickles has his own inner struggles with not trying or not giving his all, or succumbing to just following the path. As he moves back from Boston to New Jersey, he's ashamed of himself and how he still hasn't actually lived: "And I’m as much of an asshole as I’ve ever been, and there is still nothing about myself I respect. Still haven’t done anything I do not later regret". He gets himself down 1 last time, saying "I have a hand and a napkin when I’m looking for sex". But then he immediately turns it around, and tells himself again: I will live. "And so now when I drink I’m going to drink to excess, and when I smoke I will smoke gaping holes in my chest, and when I scream, I will scream until I’m gasping for breath, and when I get sick, I will stay sick for the rest of my days peddling hate out the back of a Chevy Express" These progress from affirmative to antagonistic. Not only does he want to live to the extreme, but he wants to do it in his way. If he wants to sell drugs out of the back of his car as a creepy man that's what he's going to do.
The enemy throughout the entire album I think of partly as the "real world" trying to steer Stickles onto a conventional path, but also his inner battle to stay away from the path. It's like there is a gravity effect bringing him back, and the constant fight is something he both hates and relishes. Because without the potential for failure, without giving yourself fully to something, what is the point of successes? Stickles has killed himself to make this album, and I kind of wish it sucked because that is part of life, and it's something to be celebrated. But ultimately, the album is a triumph. It's a win. Patrick Stickles put everything he had out there, was ready to fail and willing to fail. He tried his absolute hardest and probably got to the point where he had put so much in he was nervous about handling failure. And he created the greatest album of all time.
"But my enemy, it's your name on my lips as I go to sleep. And I know what little I've known of peace. Yes, I've done to you what you've done to me. And I'd be nothing without you, my darling. Please don't ever leave."
