Local Business is the third full length by New Jersey’s finest purveyors of punk rock inflected indie, Titus Andronicus. The Springsteenian spirit which has seethed, just barely contained, under the surface of their previous material bursts forth in abundance on this album. The Boss’s influence is felt clearly in Patrick Stickle’s somewhat rambling, dense lyrics on songs like ‘Ecce Homo’ and ‘Upon Viewing Oregon’s Landscape With the Flood of Detritus’ which centre around blue collar social commentary and everyday miserablism. The latter also borrows the glockenspiel embellishments from ‘Born to Run’ and adds some rollicking bar room piano to the formula. As lively as that may sound, there is a curiously one speededness about the record, much of it occupying the same tonal and dynamic ranges, to the point that the whole thing becomes a bit mushed together in the mind of the listener.
The almost uncomfortably frank ‘My Eating Disorder’ is a high point, moving from a jaunty opening half towards a more pared down single riff, which is repeated with increasing intensity while Stickles intones the words ‘spit it out’ over and over again. Fifteen minutes shorter than the sprawling The Monitor from 2010, Local Business benefits from its relative brevity, with tunes rarely outstaying their welcome, with the exception perhaps of gloomy ten minute closer ‘Tried to Quit Smoking’.
A decent effort from a band capable of more, this is neither a defining statement nor a nadir, but more of a missed opportunity let down by flat production and an absence of the propulsive energy of their previous two records.
— Ivan Deasy
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjXpyP4ODgc?rel=0]
