The Titus Andronicus Patreon is My Favorite Thing Online

A few words about my favorite band

There were a few brief windows of time last year in which going to shows was a perfectly safe, relatively risk-free activity for the vaccinated, and I’m happy to say I crammed a few good ones in there: Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye guesting with Pearl Jam in Asbury Park and shouting, “This is the righteous shit, man!” into the mic as if the set were the first time he’d ever heard Pearl Jam’s music; a fresh-out-of-rehab John Mulaney in Philadelphia cutting loose in a way I didn’t think possible for comedy’s buttoned-up golden boy; Michelle Zauner kicking off Japanese Breakfast’s three-night stand at Brooklyn Steel by playing an enormous gong on “Paprika.” Nice ones! Now, as 2022 begins with Omicron cases surging exponentially and live events getting adjusted, postponed, or cancelled, I find myself thinking, “Well, at least I have the Titus Andronicus Patreon.”

Patrick Stickles, the New Jersey rock band’s front man, started the page in late summer 2020, offering the kind of ephemera that has captivated rock obsessives through the ages—studio outtakes, unreleased tracks, and bootlegged audio of live shows—for as little as five dollars a month. The Patreon is (duh) partly an economic maneuver, offering fans some of the Titus Andronicus material Stickles had laying around in an effort to, as he says, “help keep the lights on,” but it’s also characteristically ballsy of Stickles to assert that Titus Andronicus is worthy of such close attention, that the band’s live shows or rehearsal footage rewards such intense scrutiny. It is and does, of course, but more than serve as a simple source of entertainment for locked-down fans, the page further establishes Titus Andronicus’s place as the modern standard bearer of the rock and roll legacy, the ones charged with carrying the torch forward.

Let’s take bootlegs for example. Early rock fans began covertly recording live shows in the mid-60s—Bob Dylan on the East Coast and the Grateful Dead on the West. The practice extended to the major artists of the 70s, including Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen, and The Rolling Stones, with tapers finding ways to copy and circulate their recordings and, in some cases, pressing them on vinyl. Today, trading and sharing bootlegs continues online but is mostly limited to that same group of artists. Pearl Jam and Phish are the only contemporary bands to incite similar obsessive communities, but they formed in 1990 and 1983 respectively, so we might define “contemporary” loosely here. Moreover, these are the same acts who unload troves of “previously unreleased” studio outtakes in the form of lavish box sets. By doing these same things, by acting like those legendary bands, Titus Andronicus stakes its claim in the pantheon alongside them. It’s the kind of thing they do best.

A somewhat divisive figure in indie rock, Stickles has a reputation of being difficult to work with (a suspected source of the band’s frequent lineup changes), and I have friends who still haven’t gotten over his now decade-old smear of Kurt Vile. But Stickles goes about his project with a grandiosity that counts for a hell of a lot. There’s an audacity to making his name with 2010’s The Monitor, a concept album that equates early-twenties angst and personal crises with the horror of the civil war, then following it up in 2015 with a 93-minute rock opera about manic depression. And the band’s sound is every bit as ambitious as its subject matter, combining the chaotic rage of the mosh pit with the grandiose guitar hooks of classic rock. Who else does shit like this? What other young person in the 21st century approaches rock music with such sincerity? Who else thinks this big?

I mean, it feels silly on some level to care about rock music in the year 2022, doesn’t it? The term “dad rock” is so oversaturated now, it’s lost a good deal of its critical power, but the basic idea is that, well, rock is for boring old farts. Plus, it’s been politically defanged ever since Ronald Regan coopted “Born in the USA” for his reelection campaign in 1984, a fate that may have befallen punk had Beto O’Rourke made it any farther in the Democratic Primary. Local music scenes in general have been hobbled by global sharing on platforms like Soundcloud, and let’s face it: no one wants to like the same music as the old guy forcing you to listen to him noodle on a Dire Straits song when you’re just trying to have a nice time at your girlfriend’s house for the holidays. But Stickles is almost singlehandedly putting all those doubts to rest.

I’ll put it another way. Speaking of the 2020 Primary, Jacob Bacharach wrote a column for Truthdig around the time of Bernie Sanders’ early wins in Iowa and Nevada in which he lamented that the standard bearer for leftism in America was a then-78-year-old man: “There’s something gray and depressing about a crusty, seventy-something, New Deal liberal representing the great electoral hope of the American left. There are, of course, a number of engaging young progressives in office now, but the fame and near-celebrity profiles of newcomers like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez belie the still fundamentally local power bases of these congresswomen, none of whom has yet been tested even in a statewide election.”

You could say the same of rock. The top touring acts in 2019 included Elton John (#2), The Rolling Stones (#4), and Fleetwood Mac (#10), who were also three of the top touring acts of the 1970s—forty years ago. With all these artists solidly in their 70s, who takes up the mantle when the reaper finally comes? I submit that Stickles is the man for the job, existing firmly on the rock continuum but pushing the form further, injecting it with new life and vitality. His band has everything in balance: punk and classic rock, sincerity and irony, chaos and restraint. But most of all, they’ve got guts.

Stickles thinks big in a way that neither his indie peers nor the top rock acts of the day do. When I saw him come on stage to introduce The Monitor, the classic album he and his band were about to play in its entirety at the Music Hall of Williamsburg last November, he said, “But remember, Titus Andronicus does not have one classic album. We’ve got six! So far!” It’s partly a joke, as The Monitor is still their most well-known work, but it’s also a mission statement, a warning shot against living on past glories. Stickles is in this for the long hall, and if he’s the best rock can do at the moment, I’d say we’re doing just fine.

This is the righteous shit, man.

Further Reading: My favorite Patrick Stickles profile, by Michael Tedder over at Stereogum