Titus Andronicus at Project Lodge
Bao Nguyen
When New Jersey punks Titus Andronicus blew the roof off of the Project Lodge on Tuesday night, it was a bit like Edith Massey bursting out of the nauseatingly skin-tight outfit she wears throughout the John Waters' classic Female Trouble. As the set blasted off with “A More Perfect Union”—the opening cut from Titus’ new album The Monitor—the tiny, packed art gallery exploded with energy like never before. “And if I come out on a donkey, let me go out on a gurney!” vocalist-guitarist Patrick Stickles shouted over the song’s three-guitar attack. The band followed with a rendition “Joset Of Nazareth’s Blues” that saw guitarist-keyboardist David Robbins hammering at his electric piano under the howling harmonica of Stickles. Meanwhile, the kids up were slam-dancing, bouncing up and down, and holding their beers high in the air—air that reeked of bad breath and dude-sweat.
The Jersey punks’ greatest asset may have been the way they explored their towering dynamics. “Fear And Loathing In Mahwah, NJ” began as a hushed sing-along between Stickles and his audience—“I just pray you will not be spared / Fuck you!” Upon wall-shaking scream of those last two words, the whole room spun into chaos along with the song. The song then erupted into a powerful shuffle as Stickles cranked out a messy lead under the swelling violin of Amy Klein. After the tune, Stickles addressed the one girl who was slam-dancing up front. “This is how it should be! Just like DC hardcore in the early nineties, girls up front!”
At one point during the set, Stickles was bummed to find out that a certain guest wasn’t in the audience. “This next song is for our buddy Julian,” Stickles said between songs in an attempt to call out his friend, former high school classmate, and our local clarinet-wizard Julian Lynch. “Wait, uh…Jules? Are you here? Oh well, he’s a PhD candidate, I’m sure he has other stuff to do.” Later on, Stickles explained that the band usually stays with Lynch when it tours through Madison, so the quintet didn’t bother making arrangements. However, a girl in the front row quickly raised her hand and offered her place to them.
As Titus Andronicus’ set wound down to its final moments, sweat dripped from Stickles' arms. He even stopped playing his guitar for a moment during set-closer “Four Score And Seven” to wring out his T-shirt, smirking. The killer set pulled plenty tunes from both The Monitor and 2008’s The Airing Of Grievances. In all honesty, Titus Andronicus was probably too big for the Project Lodge. Stickles became a bit frustrated as the crazies up front kept disconnecting his mic cable. There were several “oh shit’ moments when the P.A. system was almost knocked over entirely, to the point that one of the Lodge’s employees felt the need to jump up front and hold the speakers up. During “Titus Andronicus Forever,” kids were even attempting stage dive off of the Lodge’s one-foot stage. During the heart-wrenchingly powerful “Richard II,” a kid crowdsurfed under the relatively low ceiling, in danger of kicking down a projector box mounted up there for film screenings and art shots. Then again, that's probably how a fucking punk show should be.
