Back in 2012 at The Stone Pony, Patrick Stickles of Titus Andronicus broke a string on his new Les Paul Jr. As he struggled with replacing it on the unfamiliar instrument, he took questions from the crowd. "What's your favorite diner?" "What's your favorite Seinfeld episode?" Someone asked him what his favorite recent album was; and, without hesitation, he said Fucked Up's David Comes to Life. If you go to YouTube and watch Fucked Up's in the round performance of the album at Le Poisson Rouge, you can see Patrick Stickles -- whose band opened the show -- right up front screaming every word.
David Comes to Life is a 77-minute punk opera about love, loss, hope, despair, and fate. It asks the question, "If you knew how everything was going to turn out, would you have done it anyway?" It's ultimately pretty inspiring, and it seems to have, at least partially, inspired Patrick Stickles to create his band's latest work, the 93-minute, 29-track The Most Lamentable Tragedy.
The Most Lamentable Tragedy is a rock opera in five acts that deals with Stickles's personal struggle with manic depression. This one is difficult to write for me. Not because I suffer from any clinical mental illness (that's been diagnosed so far); but because there are things here with which I identify and which speak to me. I didn't want to turn Stickles's personal struggles into my own thing. Everybody's issues are different, and I didn't want to claim that I knew Stickles's experiences. But this is my blog, so what the hell?
The guitars that open "No Future Part IV: No Future Triumphant" immediately recall David Comes To Life. The song introduces the protagonist, Our Hero, at a point when he's "sunk" into a "repugnant dungeon." Doors and windows closed, no light coming in, he doesn't even want to leave his room. "I hate to be awake."
Note: This made me think of this thing I've been doing for years I call "Reverse Christmas Eve-ing." It's the act of staying up as late as possible to stave off the arrival of the next morning. Not so much "I hate to be awake," though. More like "I hate to wake up." Anyway...
"Stranded (On My Own)" continues the theme of Our Hero's finding himself at a low point following a period of apparent happiness or, at least, activity. "Crazy heart where have you gone?... ...Left alone to dread the dawn." We meet the "mystery beast," or Our Hero's internal demon; and we get the first reference to Our Hero's lifelong attempt at better living through chemicals: "Just take your Ritalins and you can play the old hits again."
"Lonely Boy" again starts with a kind of Fucked Up intro but quickly morphs into a garage rocker reminiscent of something like "Another Night" by another Stickles favorite, The Men. This is the point where Our Hero's anxiety causes him to, maybe, lash out at people. "Stay away. He doesn't wanna hurt you" and "A lonely boy is an angry boy."
Another Note: This "you hurt the ones you love" thing is no fun, especially when you can see it for what it is and are powerless to stop it.
Still Another Note: The "Hello, Newman" reference makes me laugh every time. CoolMom and I have this thing we do when something annoying happens where we'll clench a fist and go, "Newman!"
"I Lost My Mind (+@)" is a lyrically clever account of Our Hero's lifelong struggle. It takes us from the first appearance of trouble to the present day when "Suicide seems superior to trying to survive."
The band cover Daniel Johnston's "I Lost My Mind" in Act II. Here, though, it comes after we've met the "Lookalike," Our Hero's doppelgänger. He's the other half of Our Hero's personality who tries to coax him from his "repugnant dungeon." It's more upbeat. "Mr. E. Mann" -- the mystery man, "I am the Electric Man" -- wipes the winter away.
Again with the Notes: This theme of a double is something that Stickles has played with before. See the press conference announcing the #SEVENSEVENINCHES subscription series.
Things begin to ratchet up on the anthemic, Springsteen-esque "Fired Up." Our hero takes to self-medicating. "They sell you shit to make you sick. That shit I sell will make you well." And we reach a fever pitch with appropriately manic single "Dimed Out." Our hero's creativity is at its peak. He can do anything.
One More Note: "I like, "like it" like it dimed out" is one of those subtly clever and humorous lyrics that you'd miss without a lyrics sheet. The quotation marks are everything.
Our Hero ultimately falls into past-life dreaming, recalling his "hidden heritage" on the Gaelic-inflected "More Perfect Union." An ancestor arrives in America bringing with him Our Hero's inheritance.
Act III opens with "Sun Salutation." If Acts I & II were winter and spring respectively, this is clearly summer. Things are hot. Our Hero is a slave to his desires on the nine-minute "(S)He Said / (S)He Said." He gets what he wants and something more. The shoegazy "Funny Feeling" has him convincing himself that he can control what's inside of him; and on single "Fatal Flaw," he decides to let out "the beast" and see what happens. "Will she freak when she sees my capabilities?"
It's still summer in Act IV, and Our Hero is actually happy. "Together we greet the dawn!" he sings on "Come On, Siobhán," a far cry from hating to be awake in Act I. But there's also a sense of desperation in the repeated "Come on" that ends the song. A cover of Pogues' classic "A Pair of Brown Eyes" -- "And I thought about a pair of brown eyes that waited once for me" -- signals, perhaps, the end of the relationship.
"The Fall" opens Act V and lets us know it's autumn -- the season when it starts to get dark early and when things start to die. The instrumental interlude is also the sound of falling. We're coming down off of another high, "Into the Void." "Into the Void" is a hard rocker in which Our Hero scolds himself for even trying to have happiness: "...there ain't no living man that can spin a world of shit into a golden pearl."
OK, One More Note: This is how David starts out in David Comes to Life, believing that having something good just means that something bad is around the corner. Always waiting for "The Other Shoe."
On the quiet, piano-based "No Future Part V: In Endless Dreaming," Our Hero starts to realize that he and "the beast" / Lookalike / doppelgänger are one in the same. His double still works on him, though. Tries to get him to to take "a way out," "Enter the endless dream with me."
Not the Final Note: These thoughts enter everybody's head at some point, right? Right? Maybe multiple times? Maybe even often? Your brain is a computer, exploring all the options. It's what your brain does when it comes to this one that makes all the difference.
Accordion, the lo-fi recording style of Daniel Johnston, and pained vocals characterize "Stable Boy." Our Hero promises, "...no, never, no, never no sleeping forever." And, I guess, in a way, that's why he gets to call himself Our Hero. Living is heroic. Not just for Our Hero, but for everyone. Sticking it out, working, working to make a go of it is incredibly difficult; and it's no small thing to make that choice every single day.
Like David in David Comes to Life, Our Hero ultimately decides that it's worth it; and that he's willing to go through the cycle all over again.
End Note: So this is something I vowed never to do: An almost song by song recap of somebody's record. I didn't know how else to approach it, though. "It's a punk opera and it's long and these four songs are really good" didn't seem to be the right approach. The Most Lamentable Tragedy is an impressive work. It's impressive in its openness and in how deeply personal it is, but it's also impressive in how its deeply personal nature translates into something almost universal. It's hit me hard since I started listening to it, and I won't stop thinking about it for a long time.
The Most Lamentable Tragedy is out now on Merge.
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