Album Review: Titus Andronicus - Local Business

You'd be forgiven for assuming that a band pinching their name from a Shakespeare play would be some highbrow classical mob, but New Jersey noisemakers Titus Andronicus sure aren't classical. They've probably been guilty of verging on highbrow before – their 2010 sophomore effort The Monitor was a brilliant concept narrative set in the American Civil War – but not on their latest effort, Local Business. It's a more stripped-back affair than its predecessors – definitely more indie rock than punk over the journey – but one still as emotionally powerful as those visceral early efforts.

The album finds frontman and songwriter Patrick Stickles in an open and emotionally vulnerable frame of mind, delivering a set of his most honest and self-analytical lyrics to date. My Eating Disorder deals with his lifelong battle with the rare 'selective eating disorder' affliction, in Tried To Quit Smoking he admits “It's not that I wanted to hurt you/I just didn't care if I did”, while In A Big City finds him confessing “I grew up on one side of the river, I was a disturbed dangerous drifter/Moved over to the other side of the river, now I'm a drop in a deluge of hipsters”. Elsewhere, Upon Viewing Oregon's Landscape With The Flood Of Detritus concerns a fatal car accident and how it affects (or fails to affect) those who immediately view the carnage, a telling treatise on the modern malaise.

Local Business is another dose of inquisitive and insightful rock'n'roll from a band rapidly building a reputation as both strong songwriters and a fearsome live proposition – here's hoping that Australian fans get to test that latter hypothesis soon.