The Airing of Greivances by Titus Andronicus is the best album of the year

I started this one a while ago, but for whatever reason I couldn't finish it. I've bought my last new CD of the year (The Orchard by Fire on Fire), and I can say with supreme confidence that no album this year has excited me more than this one. I fell in love with this band within the first ten minutes of hearing them live for the first time. Live, they can be a chaotic sloppy experience, but on this album, they actually manage to reign things in just enough to deliver one of the most effective and compelling rock albums I've heard in a while.

Opening song "Fear and Loathing in Mahwah NJ" basically seals the deal by itself. Opening with Patrick Sickles alone on guitar and vocals sounding as if he has a long hallway between himself and the microphone, the song kicks into gear with a rousing cry of "Fuck you!" and blasts off with about a minute and a half of furious rock music with the second half of the lyrics sung with the full band behind him. Then the music falls back to allow a guitar riff to rive above the wreckage. Eventually the rest of the band joins in again to the end, and they sprint to the end of the song. The only thing I don't like about this track is the barely intelligible spoken word bit at the end, but every other moment is flawless.

And the album is full of similarly great songs. "Joset of Nazareth Blues" sounds like it should be a Mekons song (highest compliment I can give a rock song), Parts 1 and 2 of "No Future" are both spectacular as well. Part 1 is especially interesting, because it's probably the slowest and quietest song on the album. Sure it features plenty of loud guitars like the rest of the tracks, but as fun as that is, the quieter beginning is done so well that I never get impatient for the song to kick into high gear.

Songs like "Arms Against Atrophy" suffer only by comparison to the numerous great rock songs on this album. And that's really the one drag of listening to The Airing of Grievances, the songs I love stand out so strongly from the rest, that 3 of the 9 songs almost feel like filler. But all in all, this is the most exhilarating and exciting rock album I've heard in a long time. Exhilarating because...well duh, I just told you. Exciting because ....well there is also the obvious for this one. But there's also the fact that this album shows so much promise. Titus Andronicus could become any sort of rock band they wanted judging from this album. They could be the rowdy sloppy rock band that I first thought they were. They could be a loud guitar-rock band. Shoe-gaze, punk, country or whatever else they wanted. This album shows promise in so many ways.

But so much of this album is about being young, angry and disillusioned that I wonder if these guys can keep it up as they grow up. If the next 4 Titus Andronicus albums are like this, it'll get really old really fast. But there are 6 of them. Maybe someone else will pitch in on song writing duties. Or maybe Patrick Sickles will continue to amaze us. Whatever it is, I'll want to stick around at least for the sequel.