Download: Titus Andronicus, "A More Perfect Union"

​This is the epic, leaving-New-Jersey-and-already-sorta-regretting-it album opener from The Monitor, the new Titus Andronicus record that you'll be hearing quite a lot about soon. It's civil war-themed, sorta. Also about moving to Boston, and friends. Some other stuff too. TA frontmant Patrick Stickles may well be a better writer than any of us at SOTC so we'll let him explain:

So what does all this sound like? It has long passages of ambient drones, blazing saxophone, pianos homages to "A Charlie Brown Christmas," complete marching drumlines, Thunder Tube solos, fourteen-minute Billy Bragg knock-offs, backwards liturgical pieces, bombastic country duets, garbage cans hit with tambourines, choirs of angels with bromantic faces, probably too many spoken word interludes lifted from cassette tapes, and, of course, the hissy-fit punk songs and off-key warbling we have come to expect from Titus Andronicus. Did I mention that this record is sixty-five minutes long? Because that's kind of important. Through and through, it is a wholehearted and potentially ill-advised grab for some sort of imaginary brass ring, the sound of a band desperate for success and defiantly unafraid of failure. That was the idea, at least.

Blah blah blah Springsteen blah blah blah beer blah blah blah beard blah blah blah Shakespeare yadda yadda yadda Seinfeild blah blah blah Conor Oberst in a vat of acid blah blah blah books.

Take that, Lester Bangs, wherever you are right now. Download now at Stereogum.