Day After Day #140: A More Perfect Union

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

A More Perfect Union (2010)

As someone who has put together a weekly radio show for nearly 11 years now, I can assure you that there is still plenty of good new rock music being made. Although I have not featured much of it in this space, but I've still got 225 days to do so. Today I'm featuring a song from one of the best bands of the last 15 years, Titus Andronicus. Are they selling out arenas and topping the charts? No, but they should be, goddammit. Actually, I'm selfishly glad I can go see them kick absolute ass in small clubs.

The band was formed in 2005 by singer-guitarist Patrick Stickles in Glen Rock, New Jersey. Right from the start, Stickles and co. were combining serious literary references with sweaty punk rock. Their first album, The Airing of Grievances, came out in 2008 on Troubleman Unlimited and was re-released in January 2009 on XL Recordings. I caught them at the Middle East downstairs opening for Ted Leo and was suitably impressed.

TA's second album, The Monitor, was released in 2010 and it was ambitious for an indie band's sophomore effort. A sprawling concept album based on the American Civil War isn't the usual fare you get from young punk bands, but damn if they didn't pull it off. Most of the songs on the album are over 5 minutes, with four of them over 7 minutes, including the closing track "The Battle of Hampton Roads" clocking in at 14:02. This might sound like the most pretentious thing you can imagine, but The Monitor wasn't full of prog-rock noodling or endless guitar solos. Stickles wears his Jersey roots proudly, referencing Bruce Springsteen in the first and last songs, with the Civil War acting as an allegory for growing up in Jersey during tough times (with some Boston references thrown in from his time living around here).

"There'll be no more counting the cars on the Garden State Parkway/Nor waiting for the Fung Wah bus to carry me to who-knows-where/And when I stand tonight, 'neath the lights of the Fenway/Will I not yell like hell for the glory of the Newark Bears?/Because where I'm going to now, no one can ever hurt me/Where the well of human hatred is shallow and dry/No, I never wanted to change the world, but I'm looking for a new New Jersey/Because tramps like us, baby, we were born to die."

The song and the album reflect the band's influences, which include the Replacements, Thin Lizzy, the Pogues and the Clash, which is about as awesome a collection of inspirations as you're gonna get. 

"I'm doing 70 on 17, I'm doing 80 over 84/And I never let the Merritt Parkway magnetize me no more/Give me a brutal Somerville summer/Give me a cruel New England winter/Give me the great Pine Barrens/So I can see them turned into splinters/'Cause if I come in on a donkey, let me go out on a gurney/I want to realize too late I never should have left New Jersey."

This album came out so long ago that the band premiered the video for this song (the first half of its 7 minutes anyway) on its freakin' Myspace page. The second half of the song rocks furiously, tying in the Civil War allegory.

"I sense the enemy, they're rustling around in the trees/I thought I had gotten away but they followed me to 02143/Woe, oh woe is me, no one knows the trouble I see/When they hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree/I'll sit beneath the leaves and weep/None of us shall be saved, every man will be a slave/For John Brown's body lies a'mouldering in the grave and there's rumblings down in the caves/So if it's time for choosing sides, and to show this dirty city how we do the Jersey Slide/And if they deserve a better class of criminal, then I'm'a give it to them tonight/So we'll rally round the flag, rally round the flag."

There were plenty of guests helping out, including members of Hallelujah the Hills, the Felice Brothers, the Hold Steady, Spider Bags and Vivian Girls. It's anthemic, raucous and epic. It debuted at #7 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart and got plenty of critical praise.

Titus has released five albums since then, some more stripped down than others, but all excellent; the most recent one was 2022's The Will to Live. The band has had many members come through, with Stickles the one constant, but it has featured the same lineup since 2016, including powerhouse drummer Chris Wilson, who also plays in Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. I've seen them a bunch of times and for my money, they're one of the best live acts going.