I’ve lis­tened to this about 1,000 times. Don’t know if it’s the go-for-the-throat vocals, the clever Spring­steen ref, or the Dinosaur Jr. gui­tars, but I’ve been com­plete­ly cap­ti­vat­ed by a band I wrote off after their debut. ‘The Mon­i­tor’ blows away any­thing I remem­ber from ‘The Air­ing of Griev­ances,’ which isn’t say­ing much, since I remem­ber about zero from the lat­ter. I may need to revis­it that one.

For­give me for being turned off by a lack­lus­ter per­for­mance at John­ny Bren­da’s once. There was a stretch where every hyped indie act I saw proved dis­ap­point­ing on any lev­el. Pret­ty sure they opened for the Ponys. I’m still recov­er­ing from that experience.

Suf­fice it to say that I have a very sen­si­tive BS detec­tor when it comes to bands that fall into that cat­e­go­ry of new truth in indie rock, but Titus Andron­i­cus have defied all expec­ta­tions. Sol­id. I mean, who even releas­es a sopho­more album any­one pays atten­tion to any­more? Con­grats, dudes.