Titus Andronicus
‘The Monitor’
(Merok)

At 25, Bruce Springsteen penned nine words – “tramps like us, baby we were born to run” – packed up his Chevy and sodded off to stardom. One year his (then) junior and hailing from the same New Jersey shores, Titus Andronicus frontman Patrick Stickles has been dodging Boss comparisons since his drunk-rock medleys crashed boozily through our bars in 2008. Stickles is the beerspitting realist to Springsteen’s desperate dreamer, though, so when he echoes those famous words on ‘The Monitor’ opener ‘A More Perfect Union’, we suddenly find ourselves “born to die” instead. It makes for stunning listening – raging, vitriolic lyrics in 14-minute, bagpipe-toting epics – that, while not likely to set Stickles up as the new Springsteen, might at least get him outta New Jersey.

Sam Coare