After 53 days on the road, Titus Andronicus was finally home.  The group was set to play Maxwell's, the popular Hoboken music venue just across the Hudson River from Manhattan and about a 30-minute drive away from Glen Rock, New Jersey, where Titus was formed.  As the band waited around for their show to start, they hugged old friends and shook hands with devoted hometown fans. "It feels good to be back in Jersey," Eric Harm, the band's drummer said at one point. "My parents are here and after the show they're going to drive me home."

Titus Andronicus was started by Patrick Stickles (vocals, guitar) and Ian Graetzer (bass) while the two were in high school and, as most New York area musicians set up shop in Brooklyn, Titus has remained steadfastly, almost defiantly, true to its Jersey roots. "A More Perfect Union," the lead single from the band's new album, "The Monitor," namechecks the Garden State Parkway and the Newark Bears before twisting a famous Springsteen lyric: "Tramps like us, baby we were born to die." For Stickles and Graetzer, Jersey is a home as well as a way to remain indie rock outsiders. In his review of "The Monitor," Pitchfork critic Rob Mitchum emphasized the urgency of the songs, underscoring the band's outsider status. "Modern indie rock generally treats emotion as something that should be guarded or disguised," Mitchum observed. "'The Monitor' does not subscribe to this viewpoint."

Another critic, Stephen M. Deusner of Express, wrote that, for every cultural allusion or emotional confession, the band adds "a rousing sing-along perfect for chanting drunkenly or a splintered guitar riff ideal for air-guitar shredding."  The crowd at Maxwell's would certainly agree as beer-soaked chanting and air-guitar playing were on full display. This episode of Site & Sound features Titus performing their rollicking anthem "Four Score and Seven." The song's central chant was as much a punk declaration that night as it was an offering of reassurance to the hometown crowd from an increasingly successful band: "It's still us versus them! It's still us versus them!"

Special thanks to NYC Taper for additional audio. He has an excellent recording of the entire show available on mp3.