As if to allay any fears of a starchy Civil War concept album — peep the cover-image daguerreotype, yo — Titus Andronicus frontman Patrick Stickles spends the first minute of The Monitor shouting out a series of cultural artifacts that postdate that conflict by, oh, about a hundred years: the Garden State Parkway, the Newark Bears, even the Fung Wah bus. So, yeah, The Monitor is about the blue and the gray — but what it's really about, as Stickles recently told the Village Voice, is the roots of external conflict, and how they're just outward manifestations of our own internal conflicts.
That means you get Stickles roaring about being told he'll always be a loser over full-throttle indie-Springsteen arrangements replete with bleating Clarence Clemons saxophone lines, pavement-pounding marching-band drums, and loads of drunk-dude Dropkick Murphys gang-vocal chants. (All these Boston connections are no coincidence: Stickles shipped up here for an ultimately unhappy stint following college in New Jersey.) Expect an analysis of the War of 1812 from the Gaslight Anthem anytime now.
TITUS ANDRONICUS | Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave, Allston | April 12 @ 9 pm | 18+ | $10 | www.greatscottboston.com
