It may not be recorded and celebrated in the history books, schoolteachers may not force their students to memorize the date, but April 11, 2018 was the day that pop diva Mariah Carey came out of the mental-health closet and publicly announced that she suffered from bipolar disorder. It was also the day that New Jersey art-punk band Titus Andronicus played at The Masquerade in Atlanta, and the confluence of these two events is that Titus Andronicus' frontman, singer, and guitarist Patrick Sickles has been quite open and honest for years about his struggles with bipolar disorder, even writing a rock opera about his struggle on the 2015 album The Most Lamentable Tragedy.
But before we get to that, the show opened with a most enjoyable set by Rick Maguire of the indie Boston band Pile. Maguire performed most of his set solo, although he was accompanied by pianist Alex Molini on a few songs toward the middle of his set before taking over the piano himself and finishing his set solo once again.
Molini was the only other musician on stage with Patrick Stickles during Titus Andronicus' set as well. Stickles called this the "Titus Andronicus acoustic tour," even though he played electric guitar throughout and Molini was on electric piano. Still, it was a stripped-down version of the band playing stripped down versions of their songs, mostly from their latest album A Productive Cough.
It mostly worked, especially on the new songs, although I did miss hearing the "shoop sha la la's" during Above the Bodega.
The first half of the show was pretty much what one would expect from a stripped-down Titus Andronicus set. During his banter, Stickles noted how it was appropriate that he was performing on the Hell stage of The Masquerade (the venue has three stages, named, for some reason, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory). "I've felt like I've been in hell most of my life," he noted, before going on to talk about Mariah Carey's announcement that day and how good it made him feel to hear someone else, anyone else, come out and publicly admit to the same struggle he's fought with for all his life.
But then the show became unhinged (although in a good way). It started when the "band," such as it was, performed a punk cover of Where Everybody Knows Your Name (the theme from Cheers), with Stickles singing accompanied only by Molini's piano, and then he wandered out into the audience, microphone in hand, and ordering a drink as he performed several more songs, including a cover of Tom Waits' Better Off Without A Wife, while sitting on the bar. It might have seemed very spontaneous and off-script, but as you can see in the video below, he did about the exact same thing several nights before in Fort Worth, Texas (and I'm sure at other stops on the current tour as well).
He had to have performed at least a half-dozen songs from the floor, both from his perch on the bar and then later at the barricade by the stage, including one song right smack in front of your humble narrator. It was intimate and personal as Stickles talked frankly about his disease and sang songs about his struggle. The audience empathized with him throughout, and the guy standing next to me (the audience was almost all guys for some reason), was literally weeping - head down, palm to face, tears streaming down his cheeks. Not many other bands can achieve that painful a level of no-holds-barred rapport with their audience.
So you'd think that was it, but no, Stickles was just getting started. Well, actually, that was about the half-way point. Having covered most of the new album, the second half of the set, after Stickles finally got back on stage and strapped his guitar back on, was devoted to their other albums, but mostly The Most Lamentable Tragedy. All in all, the set lasted over two hours and although, with only two bands in the lineup and 7:00 p.m. doors, we thought we'd be home by 11:00, we didn't actually get home until after midnight.
But with a big smile on our face.
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