Titus Andronicus

The past few years have been great for Bruce Springsteen, mostly because of music other bands have been putting out. Bruce worship is everywhere: the Killers sold millions by trying to do a note-for-note remake of "Born To Run" (they called it "When You Were Young"), the Hold Steady made a career off listening to The River, and even the Arcade Fire gave him a fitting tribute with "Antichrist Television Blues". While Bruce is off doing his tributes to Pete Seeger and Brian Wilson (mostly neither successfully), dozens of young bands are trying to recapture the bar-band magic he made in the seventies.

That brings us to Titus Andronicus, the latest band to get Bruce comparisons from the critics. Their debut record, The Airing Of Grievances, went mostly unrecognized last year and got reissued early this year. The band uses a full E Street instrumentation (violin, piano, glockenspiel, saxophone), their band uses rockabilly riffs, and they are from New jersey, but the Boss comparisons end there. Really, think about how a wasted Conor Oberst would sound fronting the Replacements with the Arcade Fire adding in every instrument they can think of. It works a lot better than you'd think.

The first song starts with soft strumming before a pounding piano and drums propel us into the singer's teenage diary lyrics. The song closes with a Pogues-esque punk blowout with horns blaring. I doubt you will be humming this one at work, but it works great for a first impression, and you have to love a song called "Fear And Loathing In Mahwah, NJ".

The first six tracks blare by so fast, you need a couple of listens to catch the nuances: the fun chorus of "Titus Andronicus" (Your life is over! Your life is over!), the intro of "Joset of Nazareth's Blues" (ripped straight out of Bruce's "Promise Land"), the brilliant guitar solo at the end of "Arms Against Atrophy", and so on. The last three tracks stretch out a bit - the two part power ballad "No Future" takes almost 15 minutes and actually needs all of them. The closer, "Albert Camus", alternates gentle strumming and full-band blasts of sound; it's like the Pixies attempting "Jungleland". That is ambition for a debut record.

And that goes for the whole record. However, there are two things that prevent this great album from being a classic debut on the level of the Strokes, Arcade Fire, or Fleet Foxes. The first is the singing. Semi-atonal screaming is great for the two-minute punk jams, but the versatility I think this band is capable of will need more than that on future records. The second is the production. Cheap production works well on a White Stripes or Pavement album because there are too few instruments to get lost. Here, there is too much going on, and some horns parts and piano lines get lost in the mix - you really have to listen hard to overcome the bad production, which makes the record less enjoyable.

With that said, if you love Bruce Springsteen, the Arcade Fire, or the Replacements, you have to at least give them a try. This is an enticing listen and if they keep at it, I feel like this band has a few better albums in their future.