Titus Andronicus Live At Subterranean
So how was Titus Andronicus Friday night at Subterranean? Glad you asked.
It took a while for Subterranean to fill up for the Titus Andronicus aftershow, just because the doors were at 10:30 and Modest Mouse wasn’t even finished with Union Park until 10. The late arrivals missed out, because opener Hallelujah The Hills played a strong set of loud and heavy yet affable and fun indie rock with a seven-piece band (one of whom was a dead ringer for Eddie Vedder and did little but mumble and absentmindedly tap a tambourine, God love him) and a handful of vocal arrangements that laid somewhere between choral and gang-vocal.
Then, Titus took the stage. And if your gut response to questioning of how the show was came out as simply “Holy shit.”, you wouldn’t be far off. Their current tour is something of a victory lap for the massive, raving acclaim that their sophomore record The Monitor has received over the past few months. Despite all the acclaim, however, even frontman Patrick Stickles looked genuinely shocked at the crowd reaction to his set, which was something akin to a church revival. Sub-T doesn’t exactly have the most temperate climate even in the middle of winter, but last night the combination of Titus ripping through a triumphant set and the crowd pounding forth to greet their new favorite rock n’ roll band turned the small Wicker Park venue into a sauna.
The set was heavy on material from Monitor, which is just as well because the record is phenomenal. After a brief introduction (sadly not the recorded Civil War speeches from the record), the band kicked straight into album opener “A More Perfect Union,” and it became immediately apparent to a briefly alarmed Stickles that he’s about to become the kind of frontman whose lyrics are tattooed on fans’ bodies. Titus’ music is made for singing along with a bunch of other sweaty twenty-something males, and so lines like “Tramps like us/Baby, we were born to die!” become anthemic even in a 500-capacity venue. From there, the band didn’t yield. There were a few choice cuts from their debut record The Airing of Grievances, including the triumphant “Fear & Loathing in Mahwah, NJ,” and early into the set they tore through “No Future Part Three: Escape From No Future,” bringing the house down with the endless climactic refrain of “You will always!/Be a loser!”
The set’s final half hour, though, is where this show turned into what anybody in attendance will preach about as something truly special. Many in attendance doubted that among the songs played would beThe Monitor’s epic 14+ minute closer “The Battle of Hampton Roads,” but oh no. The band played it without any truncating, right down to Stickles replicating the album’s bagpipe solo on guitar. From there they combined the two short track from the album into “Titus Andronicus Forever…And Ever,” leading a crowd that by now was on the verge of a full collapse through declaration after declaration that “The enemy is everywhere.” To close, they ended on “Four Score and Seven,” with Stickles falling to his knees and completing the circuit of this seemingly innocuous aftershow as a truly special moment, one in which Titus Andronicus established itself to a raucous Chicago audience as a band to follow now as it continues on its course to become possibly the best rock band in the United States.
Posted by Wes Soltis on Jul 17, 2010 @ 11:11 am
