Titus Andronicus' new album, the Monitor, a concept album loosely based on the Civil War is, ahem, the kind of undertaking that gets my English major, ahem, juices flowing. I mean, they have someone credited for playing Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman. It's the kind of, to paraphrase Pitchfork, dubious enterprise usually thought up by the Decemberists (only with more shape-shifting fawns). It's also incredibly, joyously fun, if it can be fun to celebrate how much it can suck to be from New Jersey. It's fun in that Hold Steady kind of way: fun, then sad, because you listened to the lyrics, then fun again.
It's a big chunk of an album. I'm really just getting into it. The ideas being thrown around are great. Gotta love the geeky intertextuality of it all. It's fun without it, but it's even more fun if you know your Civil War, your Lincoln quotes, your Walt Whitman, and if you know who Bruce Springsteen is. Standout moment of the first song? All the Civil War songs, shouted at the top of their lungs.
Also, bagpipes (Los Campesinos! and Titus Andronicus? It truly is a glorious new age).
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