by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Same routine as yesterday: Go here to thereader.com and read my Day 2 recap of SXSW featuring reviews of performances by Neon Trees, Glen Hansard, and Gardens & Villas, and the amazing Jesus and Mary Chain, then take a look at my photo diary, below.  And if you really want to know about the pain that is SXSW, read my column in this week’s issue of The Reader, online here.

Inca Abraham at Antone's, SXSW, March 15, 2012.

Neon Trees at Antone's, SXSW, March 15, 2012.

Glen Hansard at Antone's, SXSW, March 15, 2012.

Cults at 1100 Warehouse, SXSW, March 15, 2012.

Gardens & Villa at Mohawk Patio, SXSW, March 15, 2012.

Purity Ring at Central Presbyterian Church, SXSW, March 15, 2012.

Titus Andronicus at The Belmont, SXSW, March 15, 2012.

The Jesus and Mary Chain at The Belmont, March 15, 2012.

The Jesus and Mary Chain at The Belmont, March 15, 2012.

Tomorrow: Day 3. See you then…

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Titus Andronicus at The Waiting Room, Sept. 16, 2010.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

How would I describe last night’s Titus Andronicus show at The Waiting Room? I wouldn’t say it was “epic” as much as an attempt at being epic. You could describe Titus’ music as tuneful anthem punk — the songs usually start off as quiet indie ballads that slowly build and explode into pounding riffs, sing-along lyrics and the occasional Celtic-flavored melody. It’s a lot of territory to cover, and that means some pretty long songs. And though I was exhausted at the end of their 90-minute set, I felt like I just saw what could become an important band at a pivotal moment in its history.

They’re still just starting out. While Titus has gotten a lot of national press and attention (including some late-night network chat-show airplay) for a band that’s only been around only a couple years, it’s still very much flying under the radar, judging by last night’s draw of only a couple hundred, many of whom came to see pop opener Free Energy. In fact, at the end of the set, Titus did the ol’ “We’re looking for a place to crash tonight” spiel from stage. They’re definitely living out of the van these days, but judging by last night’s performance, they won’t be for long.

The band is centered on frontman Patrick Stickles, who looks like your typical indie rock beardo but sings like a man trying to exorcise his own evil spirits. He’s both a crooner and a howler, and as I said in yesterday’s feature, has often been compared to Conor Oberst vocally. You could hear some of that last night, and Stickles even acknowledged it about four songs into the set, saying that though the band has never been to Omaha, they’ve been plagued by a certain Omaha singer/songwriter, and then went on to say that his next song’s self-loathing nature (“No Future Part Three: Escape From No Future”) would showcase this. And that’s exactly what it did. We got the bray, we got the shrill screams, but they weren’t a central part of his vocal style, and when he flat out sang, he didn’t resemble Oberst at all.

Beyond the countless anthems, the highlight was the ironically named “Theme from ‘Cheers'” (my fave from their latest album) and their cover of The Misfits’ “Where Eagles Dare.” Stickles has a great band behind him these days (Titus has gone through a number of personnel changes over the past couple years), but the most entertaining addition is guitarist/violinist Alexi Crawford, whose constant pogoing — bouncing around the stage — was infectious, especially to the crowd up front. She’s the kind of person anyone would want in their band because in addition to being an amazing musician and having a sweet voice, she is intensely “into” every song — you get the sense that she feels like the luckiest person on the face of the earth to be on stage performing with this band.

If Titus has a drawback, it’s in their lack of editing. There were just too many anthems, too many attempts at heroics with each song. One can only stand so many epic closers before they begin to wear on you. It’s hard to fault a band that is just trying to entertain the best way it knows how — and with large portions. But sometimes you have to push yourself away from the table and say “no more” (but this comes from a guy who has zero interest in sitting through one of Springsteen’s legendary four-hour marathon concerts — an hour is more than enough of the Boss). I think Titus is still trying to figure out the right balance, and when they do — both on stage and on their recordings — they’re going to find themselves sleeping in the Hilton downtown instead of on somebody’s floor.

Free Energy at The Waiting Room, Sept. 16, 2010.

Lots o’ hype about opening band Free Energy, and like I said, they were the reason a large portion of the crowd was there. And while I like pop rock as much as the next guy, I just wasn’t feeling it. Sure, they know their way around a good ’70s-style rock song, but frontman Paul Sprangers (following in a long tradition of frontmen who don’t play an instrument on stage) is no Robin Zander or Phil Lynott (or Julian Casablancas, for that matter) when it comes to cock-rock stage presence (if anything, he reminded me of Evan Dando). But that may come with time, along with some better songs. One of their set’s biggest crowd-pleasers was when members of Titus joined them on stage for a cover of Springsteen’s “I’m Going Down” that made me wonder why more people don’t cover that song.

* * *

On the radar screen this weekend

Tonight at The Waiting Room, Appleseed Cast returns. As interesting as the headliner are opening bands Lawrence’s Cowboy Indian Bear and new Omaha shoe-gaze flavored rockers Conduits. $12, 9 p.m.

Down at Slowdown, Ember Schrag returns. Opening is The Chiara Quartet and Noah Sterba & The Cocktails. $7, 9 p.m.

Meanwhile, this year’s Nebraska Pop Festival continues (it’s been going on in Benson for the past few days) at PS Collective. On the bill is Lincoln’s Floating Opera along with Omaha’s Thunder Power and a slew of out-of-towners. The full line-up is here. 7 p.m., $5.

Tomorrow night punk superstars/deviants Bloodcow celebrates its 10 year anniversary at The Waiting Room with Filter Kings and Saudi Arabia (The Dinks). $7, 9 p.m.

Meanwhile, down at O’Leaver’s Saturday night, it’s a Speed! Nebraska mini showcase with Wagon Blasters, Ron Wax (Ron Albertson of Mercy Rule) and Students of Crime. $5, 9:30 p.m.

Then Sunday night, it’s night one of two nights of Cursive at The 49’r. Opening is So-So Sailors. Starts at 9, SOLD OUT.

Finally, at The Waiting Room Sunday night, it’s the Pine Ridge Live Recording session for a benefit CD that will be sold later this year to generate cash for Lash LaRue’s annual Toy Drive. Slated to perform: Kyle Harvey , Jake Bellows, Dustin Clayton, All Young Girls Are Machine Guns, Son of 76 , Platte River Rain, Korey Anderson, Vago, Matt Cox, Noah’s Ark Was A Spaceship, Brad Hoshaw, Josh Dunwoody, LL Dunn, Mariachi San Juan, Cass Brostad, Brad Thompson and more. The show starts at noon and runs ’til closing, and is absolutely free.

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Titus Andronicus

Our Civil War

Titus Andronicus’ music addresses the battle within ourselves.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

A caveat before reading further: Titus Andronicus’ frontman Patrick Stickles’ comments came under the influence of having not slept in 26 hours, after he and the rest of the band drove over night from Toledo to St. Louis to play on a hot Saturday afternoon at LouFest.

“I guess ‘Lou’ is short for St. Louis,” he said, adding that the band was playing “smack in the middle of seven or eight bands. Broken Social Scene is the headliner.”

It was just two years ago that Titus Andronicus, which hails from Glen Rocks, New Jersey, began to break through the oversized, amorphous cloud that is the U.S. indie music scene with their XL Records debut The Airing of Grievances, an LP that captured their rowdy, raucous anthem-punk style.

“A lot’s happened since then,” Stickles said. “We went through a couple guitar players and made this whole other record. We’ve pretty much wildly exceeded our expectations.”

Titus Andronicus, The Monitor (XL Records)

The “other record” is sophomore effort The Monitor, released by XL this past March. While it continued in the same rambunctious fashion as their debut, the album is sprawling — more than an hour long with half the songs over seven minutes in length, and one clocking in at a whopping 14 minutes.

“I’ve never been too good at editing myself,” Stickles said. “At the time we were theorizing these songs, I guessed all would be three or four minutes long. What we ended up recording is a byproduct of me having poor temporal reasoning skills. We always strive for a level of grandiosity, but even I couldn’t have predicted that we’d go that far.”

The recording also expanded on the band’s low-fi punk sound, adding new instruments (bagpipes, fiddle, trombone, cello) that elevated these epic, drunken, Celtic-flavored sing-along ballads to a level as grand as the album’s so-called Civil War theme, which Stickles said shouldn’t be taken too literally.

“The music is set in modern times. The Civil War is only used allegorically; I thought it would be an apt metaphor,” Stickles said. In fact, the lyrics on The Monitor (named after the Civil War-era battleship) are both self-flagellating and confrontational, with slogan-like lines “Baby we were born to die,” “You’ll always be a loser,” “I was born to die like a man,” and most central to the album’s theme: “The enemy is everywhere.” Booze provides a lyrical counterbalance to desperation and hostility.

“The point is that we’re all complacent in our various societal ills,” Stickles explained. “All this stuff about the enemy being everywhere, just as often it’s inside us, our own bodies, our earthly prisons. We as individuals have to be willing to take responsibility for our own happiness and fulfillment. There seems to be a tendency of humans trying to pass the buck for their unhappiness, and say, ‘If other than xyz, I would have the life of Riley.’ To me, it’s a defense mechanism at best. It’s quite possible to achieve peace and happiness on this crazy planet, but we have to allow that to come from within rather than look for external reasons.”

Heady stuff, but beyond their deeper meaning, all those angry lines make for some amazing sing-along moments. Stickles agreed. “They tend to make the best rock and roll songs,” he said, acknowledging how much the band loves it when the crowd shouts the lines back at them. “Their enthusiasm has a way of quickly creating enthusiasm on stage.”

Stickles said the band has never played in Omaha, but heard that the city’s punks “like to rock out in the basement.” He also said he and his high school pals grew up listening to Saddle Creek Records, which opened the door to the next line of discussion.

There are probably 100 reviews of The Monitor online and in print, and I venture to guess that at least half of them compare Stickles’ rambunctious vocal style to Omaha’s very own Conor Oberst, from the overdriven screams to that distinctive Conor bray.

Stickles said he admires Oberst’s honesty. “He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’s too scared to lay it on the line,” he said, “though his last two records kind of left me cold.”

As for the comparisons, “I’ll tell you because you rep the Omaha readership,” Stickles said. “I think it’s a little short-sighted.

“The constant comparisons to anyone gets old, even if it’s Jesus Christ. Doesn’t everyone want to be themselves? Don’t we all want to blaze our own trail, though I know this is rock and roll, and there’s not too much under the sun? But it seems kind of like, uh, cheapening slightly to say that if you’ve heard one guy you can pretty much guess what this guy is going to sound like. After awhile it feels like a feedback loop, a house of mirrors, like sometimes (reviewers) get these things to sound so similar that I’m reading reviews of other reviews. But maybe that’s me being a self-righteous, entitled type. Even if it were true, is it helpful? Who’s to say? It’s not in my control. As I put my art out into the world, it’s out of my hands. History will judge.”

It will indeed. Now go get some sleep.

Titus Andronicus plays with Free Energy Thursday, Sept. 16, at The Waiting Room, 6212 Maple St. Showtime is 9 p.m. Admission is $10. For more information, call 402.884.5353 or visit waitingroomlounge.com.

* * *

An addendum to yesterday’s CVS Pharmacy item: There’s an organized protest taking place today at 4:30 p.m. on both sides of Dodge Street outside The 49’r. It’s called “The Rally to Preserve the Integrity of Dundee.” Find out more at the event’s Facebook page. Will it make a difference? Who knows… it couldn’t hurt…

* * *

So, tough choice for tonight: The Pixies or Titus Andronicus? I grew up listening to The Pixies and love all of their albums. I consider them to be among the most influential indie bands in the last 30 years. And tickets are still available in the $35 to $65 range. The show is at The Orpheum and starts at 7:30. I guess since it starts so early, there’s no reason to not go to both shows…

Opening for Titus Andronicus at The Waiting Room tonight is Free Energy, a hot hot hot new indie pop band from Philly that sounds influenced by ’70s arena acts like Cheap Trick, The Knack and yeah, Thin Lizzy, along with a healthy dose of Pavement. 9 p.m., $10.

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.