Titus Andronicus are due to return with their latest album, An Obelisk, later this summer. Produced by the great Bob Mould, the June 21st release follows a narrative journey of self-discovery and identity reconciliation. At the end of the modern spirit quest, the narrator declares, “I’m going to try and be a kinder person,” explained frontman Patrick Stickles. Now, he and the band have revealed the LP’s denouement with the closing track “Tumult Around the World”.
Where previous single “(I Blame) Society” angrily derided the ills of the world, “Tumult” finds acceptance in the fact that people everywhere face the same turmoil. “Everywhere there’s someone dying/ There’s a woman giving birth,” Stickles bellows in his trademark scratch, only to remind the listener, “But everywhere there’s people dreaming/ And people holding onto hope.” There are some beach-y “ooh-ah oohs” behind him and a celebratory march of drums, elevating the narrator’s assertion that at least we’re all getting through this chaos together.
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Take a listen via the video below, which finds Stickles enjoy a cup of tea while reading the essay collection Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism and Carl Jung’s Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.
Speaking further of the track in a statement, Stickles said,
“It’s so hard to stop the stream of spoilers these days. It should not be terribly surprising to anyone that we must each strive to shatter the illusion of individuation so that we might offer greater empathy and understanding to our whole human family, united as we are in our common struggle, and even if it is, well, I don’t want to wait til the record comes out to tell everybody.”
Pre-orders for An Obelisk, the follow-up to 2018’s A Productive Cough, are now live. You can also catch Titus Andronicus live at a select handful of shows this summer, tickets for which can be found here.
Revisit Stickles’ appearance on This Must Be the Gig:
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