Titus Andronicus: "Dimed Out"
Local Business is a fine rock album—on days I’m feeling especially piquant, I’ll insist it’s better than The Monitor, the Civil War-meets-”My So-Called Life” epic that catapulted Titus Andronicus to national attention. But it’s not difficult to see why some listeners were turned off by Local Business‘s weary defeatism: as Patrick Stickles pushed aside the romantic sad-sack Jersey thing, he took a bracing look at his flaws as an honest millennial cast as indie rock hero, expected to fill a lifetime of afternoon festival slots. He sounded soured by the attention, and wary of his opportunities. As he disappeared into self-doubt, the band went with him.
Well, Titus Andronicus is back—and emphatically so. In a few months, they’ll release The Most Lamentable Tragedy, a middle-finger in the form of a 3xLP concept album that clocks in at 29 songs over 93 minutes. “Dimed Out” is the first salvo from this impending deluge of idea rock—a blood-churning, all-hands-on-deck punk anthem-as-march to battle, stuffed with lyrics about the importance of staying earnest in an illogical world.
There’s no defeatism here. Stickles’ unnamed singer refuses to bow down: His challengers are imbeciles, and at his best, he feels invincible. It reeks of positivity, a hard-fought feeling often missing at face value from the band’s greatest songs. To date, the best Titus refrains have accepted a paranoid present and fatalistic future—“Your life is over”; “You will always be a loser”; “The enemy is everywhere”—but chosen to stay strong. “I only like it when it’s dimed out,” by comparison, is a yearbook quote—a reminder to turn it to the max, that less won’t cut it, that defiance doesn’t need to be dreary. The Most Lamentable Tragedy is a work of fiction, the press materials insist, and yet if a fictitious medium is what Stickles needs to convince himself this final fight is worth it, “Dimed Out” shows he’ll go out screaming.
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