Titus Andronicus-Local Business

This is streaming on NPR right now and it's a doozy.

http://www.npr.org/2012/10/14/162720399/first-listen-titus-andronicus-local-business#playlist

pretty disappointed in this

Oh for crying out loud man. This sounds great!

this is pretty good! but on first listen it's not touching the monitor, which is up there for best rock album of the past few years

So new bass player, and they brought back a second guitarist for this one?

I think the band and the fans of titus andronicus would be best served if they broke up and never released another album. each member should go his separate way and learn from the tragic chronological error that is the monitor. eventually I think it will become apparent that this album was a fluke.

it is sad, but even while I was listening to the monitor I could not imagine how they could ever possibly follow such an album. local business kind of proves it, I think? there is just no-where for their sound to go, and this is a band that are entirely defined by their distinct sound -- rather than being defined by the musicians making the sound, as the billion bands that release wildly different albums.

it is possible that I am just too used to the massiveness of the monitor and can't wrap my ears around the same band writing different songs.

the horrors are another band who screwed up by making one kind of generic album with no discerning features, followed by an album that is a huge change of sound and leap in ambition (though the monitor holds up better than primary colours IMO). then comes the difficult third album, where they are faced with the challenge of extracting themselves from the pigeonhole they forced themselves into. but rather than scale themselves down, as titus andronicus do, they take a different path and attempt to continue on the same trajectory. I suppose a third path a band could take would be to radically change their sound again, but they would very likely sacrifice their commercial success, as I believe both the monitor and primary colours are flukes.

anyway...

uhhhh i mean all that was true but airing of grievances was a way better record than whatever the first horrors was called

No deal in the UK at the moment I learn. They think they might release it here next spring. What's the point of that?

i am the only who thinks it could sound, erm, louder? that it feels 'undermixed' ?
i'm sure those songs will be tons of brick when performed live.

this record is pretty great. in a big city is fighting to become my favourite song by these guys