The Thousands

Chucking on VHS tapes of The Civil War miniseries was a Year 12 History Lesson back in the day, watching countless photos of dead Yankee and Confederate soldiers scored to mournful violins and rat-ta-tat drums. The Titus Andronicus’ album The Monitor charges out the gate with a new soundtrack to the American Civil War, trampling any armchair historian underfoot with its literary-punk-rock-thunder.

Opening fire with apocalyptic words from Abraham Lincoln, this ambitious album name-checks influences as fast as it can break free of them ("And tramps like us, baby, we were born to DIEEEEE"). Successfully collapsing Gettysburg imagery with the travails of drunken teenagers using their considerable musical artillery, these New Jersey anti-Vice upstarts have crafted album-of-the-year material here especially brilliant eight minute epics such as ‘Four Score and Seven.’

From casting The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn as Walt Whitman to quoting The Butthole Surfer’s ‘Pepper’ in the liner notes, The Monitor is the type of history lesson that you can study with a beer in one hand and a rebel yell in your throat.