Does Titus Andronicus have a fatal flaw? They burn through rock mythos with scorching epics, pulling apart identity, history, and personality with gut-busting guitar rock assaults. These are the guys that spit their way through youth and romantic art on The Airing of Grievances; the ones who framed a Civil War epic with Springsteen and Cheers. They make barroom chants out of self-depreciation and gin up Shakespeare-with-power-chords like it’s nothing.
So where does a band go after punk epics about flagellation, whiskey, and New Jersey? Titus Andronicus answer with The Most Lamentable Tragedy, a coming 29-track rock opera about doppelgangers and drug dealers, out July 28 and led by the exuberant “Dimed Out” and their latest single “Fatal Flaw.”
“Fatal Flaw” is a call back to rock’s smuttier days, with the harmonized guitars of a boozed up “The Boys Are Back in Town” mixed into a raucous brew of a Replacements hootenanny. Singer/band leader Patrick Stickles growls through the drugstore queue, turning a less-deceptive “Waiting for the Man” into a fist-pumping singalong about satiating manic depression with tedium and pills.
The fatal flaw on Stickles’ mind is a little ambiguous (addiction? depression? boredom?), but Titus Andronicus swings it through an explosive finale, filled with the kind of TA sloganeering that punches the air. “Let me show you my fatal flaw,” Stickles teases at the end as synthesized orchestras color an airspace charged by guitars and growls, “It’s the best thing you never saw.”