Thinking big has never been a problem for Titus Andronicus, as a look at their grand-scale concept albums The Monitor (2010) and The Most Lamentable Tragedy (2015) demonstrates. However, the group's frontman and main songwriter, Patrick Stickles, has decided this level of grandeur just isn't enough, and for 2022's The Will to Live, he stated it was his ambition to create an Ultimate Rock Album, a towering rock & roll blockbuster in the grand tradition of the Who's Who's Next and Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. The ...
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Thinking big has never been a problem for Titus Andronicus, as a look at their grand-scale concept albums The Monitor (2010) and The Most Lamentable Tragedy (2015) demonstrates. However, the group's frontman and main songwriter, Patrick Stickles, has decided this level of grandeur just isn't enough, and for 2022's The Will to Live, he stated it was his ambition to create an Ultimate Rock Album, a towering rock & roll blockbuster in the grand tradition of the Who's Who's Next and Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. The Ultimate Rock Album, of course, demands a grand theme, and the passing of Stickles' friend and former bandmate Matt "Money" Miller inspired The Will to Live's larger narrative, as the protagonist struggles to overcome a blighted upbringing and some truly regrettable life choices in pursuit of the elusive reason behind life and living. As a songwriter, Stickles certainly knows how to tell a compelling story, in individual chapters as well as on a larger whole, but it's the music that gives The Will to Live the weight and power he aspires to. Producer Howard Bilerman has gone above and beyond to make this sound heroic, with the core band (guitarist Liam Betson, bassist R.J. Gordon, and drummer Chris Wilson) augmented by a small army of guests, among them Tim Kingsbury of the Arcade Fire, Tad Kubler of the Hold Steady, and Jake Clemons of Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band. The finished product is as big and bold as Stickles and his bandmates must have hoped, and the story bears the ring of truth, but as a songwriter, Stickles' ambitions get the best of him on The Will to Live: the songs don't quite cohere into an operatic triumph as he clearly wanted, and instead this feels like a bunch of songs with an ambitious through line that doesn't make them bigger than the sum of their parts. Even if The Will to Live ultimately proves the old adage that you can't will a masterpiece into existence, what's here is the work of a great band with a fine songwriter giving their all in the studio and playing at the top of their game, and that makes it a great listen, if not quite an example of Ultimate Rock. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
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