Patrick Stickles has never been at a loss for words: In both interviews and his work with beloved punk outfit Titus Andronicus, Stickles comes across as a man with almost too much to say on any given subject.
It’s this endearing verbosity that helped produce the band’s newest record, last year’s “The Most Lamentable Tragedy.” A 29-song, hour-and-a-half-long rock opera divided into five acts, the album is a culmination of the band’s career thus far, merging the epic scale of 2010’s “The Monitor” with the back-to-basics punk of 2012’s “Local Business.”
Accompanied by opener Craig Finn of The Hold Steady, Stickles and Titus Andronicus will be playing at High Dive on Saturday, March 5 in support of “TMLT.” Last week, Stickles took the time to speak with us on his love for punk music as a form, previous time spent in Gainesville and the influence of “Watchmen” author Alan Moore on the new album.
ZS: As someone who’s incredibly literate in the music pantheon — you’ve made no secret of your love for RZA and Kanye, and you’ve been covering the Weeknd as of late — why did you choose punk as the best genre of expression for your artistic inclinations?
PS: Well, I guess the big appeal of punk is just the freedom that it offers. More than any kind of particular aesthetic signifier, punk is about elevating your interior authority and freeing yourself from any kind of set artistic rules. Within that template, you’re able to do whatever you want and draw from whatever kind of influences that you think are appropriate for your particular artistic purpose.
ZS: So was it the lack of structure and the ability to impose your own that appealed most to you?
PS: Yeah, and that goes for music as well as life. This sort of punk ideology, it encourages the musician to be free and pursue whatever it is that they want to pursue stylistically, aesthetically — but it also encourages you as a person to construct your own ideology and your own set of morals and values, rather than just lifting a ready-made set of morals and values off the shelf, which society very much encourages us to do.
ZS: In both interviews and on your records — you covered the Pogues and Daniel Johnston on the new album — you’re not shy about venerating your heroes, whether they be literary, musical or historical. Is it odd at all for you to conceive of being similarly venerated by those who came of age to the TA records?
PS: Is it odd? Well, I’m not sure if we’ve been quite as venerated as the Pogues just yet, and they haven’t made a movie about us as good as the one about Daniel Johnston. But it’s all a continuum — it’s a long chain — and I’m not shy about giving props and respect to those that inspired me because it IS a continuum, and this stuff doesn’t just come out of nowhere. But it’s an honor to be a part of that history and a part of that continuum, be a link in that chain, and if younger people recognize us as such… Well, that’s a very high honor.
ZS: You’re no stranger to Gainesville, having played previously at The Fest. What’s your take on the city and your experiences in it?
PS: From the times that we’ve been there, it’s clear that there’s a lot of people down there with an interest in punk, and it seems that it’s a good hub for that culture. Most of the times that we’ve played there in the last couple of years have been for The Fest, so I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s like in the off-season. It’s known around the world as a city that loves punk and as a hub for Floridians to come and celebrate that culture, so hopefully they’ll come out to see us make a little contribution to that culture.
ZS: Culling through previous interviews, I saw that you’re a big fan of Alan Moore’s “Miracleman,” which also happens to be one of my favorite reads as well. The series delves heavily into inspiration, subjective realities and self-actualization, all themes touched on in your own music. Out of curiosity, would you mind speaking on what “Miracleman” means to you, as well as how you’re able to take such lofty subjects and make them more immediately accessible through a punk filter?
PS: Well, I’m glad you think that they’re more accessible, because to me, “Miracleman” was a much more accessible version of ideas largely from Friedrich Nietzsche, who’s a person that I’ve been interested in for a long-time. “Miracleman” in particular has got a lot to do with this book, “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” which is where Nietzsche talks a lot about his uber-mensch business. I found “Miracleman” to be a really good way to communicate some of those ideas in a way that maybe had a little more entertainment value. I read it for the first time when I was a much younger guy, ten years ago maybe, and thought it was really cool, thrilling and interesting but maybe didn’t know all that much of the deeper subtexts. But going back to it years later, in particular when we were making “The Most Lamentable Tragedy,” the rock opera album we put out last year, and the attempts at studying Nietzsche that I’ve made in the years between, I could see a lot more easily what Alan Moore was trying to get across. But he packaged it with a lot of thrilling action and larger-than-life, colorful images and characters, and I guess you could say our rock opera album is trying to do—
ZS: Kind of the same thing.
PS: Yeah. And making those sorts of ideas more accessible and also trying to show that even though these sorts of philosophies and highfalutin are really not as fancy and impenetrable as they seem — they actually have a lot of relevance to real life, it’s not just for school. It’s something that’s relevant to — well, I can’t say all of us, but definitely relevant to my life.
ZS: Well, there’s a beauty in struggle, and as far as my understanding goes, Nietzsche is all about imposing meaning in struggle and in hard work—
PS: Right, absolutely, and that’s what we’ve been about since day one. There’s no real way around struggling and suffering and striving in this life, and while there’s plenty of whimpering to be done about it, you put that whimper into an electric guitar in a loud band and you can turn it into a more of a celebratory kind of thing — triumphing in our inevitable failure so to speak.
Tickets are $15 to $17 in advance. The show starts at 10 p.m., and doors open at 8 p.m. Tickets are available from both Ticketfly and High Dive’s website.
