The early 2010s were such a strange time for music that an epic punk concept album about the Civil War merely feels like a blip among a musical soundscape where “witch house” was added to our lexicon, dubstep went mainstream, and party rock was somehow always in the house, whether you liked it or not. Yet for those who saw The Monitor as a history-making record and an intriguing follow-up to the debut LP from Titus Andronicus—a band who took their name from an extremely violent Shakespeare play and the name of their album from an episode of Seinfeld—the anachronistic, folk-infused collection of barroom-ready ballads likely hasn’t collected much dust in their record collections.
For such fans, as well as new converts (has TA taken off on TikTok yet?), the band revealed today a 53-minute documentary compiling archival footage from that era which they’d been sitting on for over a decade, a film that was over a year in the making. Co-created by Chris Elia and frontman Patrick Stickles, the doc is now streaming in full on YouTube. “Working on this film has given me the opportunity to commune with my younger self, growing in understanding of his motivations, and also beginning to forgive him for his reckless foolishness,” Stickles shared on Twitter this morning. “I must tip my hat to the young man in this film, and thank him for the life I live today.”
Watch the full project below, and check out the remastered version of The Monitor on Bandcamp, which you can also pre-order on vinyl.
