Full disclosure: I got “removed” from The Library this weekend and although that sounds real harsh, you have to understand that means I’ve been ejected around .01 percent of the times I’ve been there. Surprising, considering 10 percent of the time (a conservative estimate) I am unsure of how I get home from The Library. Either way, I refused to take elbows from broskies and delivered my favorite gesture, the middle finger. Nothing is more instantly gratifying or freeing than a middle finger. I take that back; peeing on gigantic trucks when you’re drunk or stealing senseless things like remote controls is probably equally fulfilling.
It’s because times like these are so fulfilling that Titus Andronicus officially take the cake for me as album of the year for 2008. Six months of regular listening (at least two times a week) and I still haven’t tired of it, just like I haven’t tired of the malt energy beverage craze. Both manage to combine the perfect amount of self destruction, awareness of corporate injustice and overall sense of meaninglessness of life with large quantities of overindulgent celebration.
The album comes chock full of the meat of life: realizing that everything you do is meaningless, stupid and pointless and that most likely burning down a McDonald’s and pissing all over it in ecstatic drunken dance while shooting down a forty of Old English would be the most positive thing you could do (more positive than voting for Barack Obama). The album opens with “Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ,” a “slow” song that makes you think of good Bright Eyes. Halfway through the song Patrick Stickles peacefully says, “The world screams out in agony and you don’t care, but should the shit hit the fan, I just pray you will not be spared.” Then the whole band yells, “Fuck You!” louder than I’ve ever heard anybody yell it and we get out of mopesville and into the real world where we solve problems by destroying everything and turning up our guitars real loud and playing drums as fast as we can.
That single moment describes this entire damn album. It’s all a gigantic middle finger to anything and everything. Nothing feels better than that and moping sucks at solving your problems. Broke up with your girlfriend? Why not shoot down a fifth of vodka and kick over trashcans all night? Here, try this. Put on their song “Arms Against Atrophy” and just throw your body erratically around. I mean, like really lose your shit. Somewhere close to Stickles delivering the line “So please don’t whisper sweet nothings in my ear when the sound of shredding vocal chords is what I want to hear” like Conor Oberst with a pair of huge testicles you will reach zen state. Or as they put it: “All the pretty horses, all flowers and trees, they will all mean less than nothing when it all has come to be.”
You’re in college so I assume on some level your life is unsatisfying: angsty relationships, general apathy, rampant abuse of drugs or just a really awful job. This album will make you feel good. It made me feel good every morning for three months that I had to get up as a college graduate at four in the morning and stock tampons and douches in Los Osos. It can solve anything.