Painting in Black and White.

• Reflections on why it's acceptable to compare every noisey two-piece indie rock act to The White Stripes.

On Friday night a friend of mine took me to see the Gaslight Anthem. They deliver what they promise. Anthems.

Anyway, more contentious was the entirely inappropriately chosen main support, Blood Red Shoes. The loud Brighton-based double act bombed. It's not that there's anything particularly terrible about them - sloppy time keeping and gratuitous PA system-based introductory music that staggers into a first track in an awkwardly different key are sins which can be forgiven as misplaced enthusiasm - it's just that there's nothing particularly interesting about them.

Let's just say they're no White Stripes.

"No!" you'll complain. "Comparing every indie rock duo to The White Stripes is predictable and unfair. It would be like comparing 95% of all rock bands to The Beatles simply because they also happen to have four members." While I agree with you in principle, the reality is that the comparisons are unavoidable. A heavily distorted guitar accompanied solely by a drum kit is an extremely limited and specific musical palette. If you choose to restrict your resources in this manner then you unavoidably face comparison with the act that perfected the formula.

Picture, if you will excuse the pun, an artist choosing to create a new work using nothing but black ink on white paper. If the artist were a good one, there would be a reason behind this decision. He would innovate. Depth, tone, and expression would have to be represented in a manner not requiring colour, or their absence would have to be felt for a very specific and thought-provoking reason. No absence would be felt.

There would be a big difference between such a competent painting and a painting which was merely unfinished - a series of black lines waiting to be coloured in.

The White Stripes represent the master artist here. Their limited palette works because Jack White is simply an extremely competent and innovative guitar player. Moreover, their particular blues rock influenced niche lends itself well to both rhythm and lead duties being handled by the one guitar.

Death From Above 1979 pull it off by making so much noise and having so much energy that any additional band members would be drowned out and left behind.

Last month Two Gallants successfully deployed the formula on The Bloom and the Blight. Sure, not every track on that album is a keeper (although let me assure you that some are), but it works because both drummer and guitarist have enough musical charisma to keep the whole thing interesting.

Blood Red Shoes however create unfinished paintings for no apparent reason. Rather than do something creative with the two person formula, they write uninspiring rock songs without colour or variation. Now, having a lead guitarist or bass player wouldn't instantly make the band interesting - a bland song is a bland song - but it would at least be a start.  

It's a shame though to come to such a conclusion when the resources for innovation are definitely already available. Both band members sing. Two vocalists: one male, one female. Do we see interesting lyrics, interplay, harmonies, and novel ways of highlighting the natural contrast between their voices, leaving us convinced that any band with more than two members is acting in a lazy or self indulgent manner? No. They take it in turns to do the exact same thing. Yell. Different gender, same yelling.

Big. Snare. And. Crash. Cymbal. Bangs. On. Each. Beat. Of. The. Bar. Accompanying. Big. Ol'. Power. Chords. And. Shouting. Only. Works. In. Moderation.

The Enemy Is Everywhere.

• Reflections on Titus Andronicus' The Monitor, and a questioning of the extent to which our station in life affects our taste in music.

Titus Andronicus were one of those bands whose name I'd read a lot around the internet. Friends had recommended them, grouping them (loosely, I now see) with lyric-heavy bands like Okkervil River or The Hold Steady. I was aware of the Springsteen New Jersey lineage.

I finally caught the band at SXSW 2012. It was the middle of the afternoon and I was way too hot. The entire week I had only  one pair of jeans with me. No shorts. The jeans got sweaty. The desert-heat hangovers were horrible things. Still, Gin and Tonic courtesy of whoever was sponsoring whatever event always made them better. I think I only began fully functioning each day around 5pm. I probably did some serious damage to my body over the course of the festival.

Despite my afternoon blues, Titus Andronicus put on one of the best shows I'd seen all week - and they made my sweating look amateur while doing it.

The night before I had watched the Shins, supported by M. Ward. When the keyboard malfunctioned during a (sort of) cover of a Monsters of Folk track, Ward stormed off the stage as his techs, embarrassed, tried to fix whatever was wrong. His band shared awkward glances. The crowd shuffled or giggled nervously. Ward could be seen just of stage, throwing himself into a small chair, his mutterings distantly being picked up by some working mic. I've still got a lot of love for the man, but ever since things just haven't been the same.

The following day Titus Andronicus also suffered some sort of malfunction. What went wrong I can't remember. It doesn't matter. I took a while to fix. I think. Was it ever fixed? Probably. I don't know. Not one person in the crowd cared. Singer Patrick Stickles kept the crowd entertained - simply by talking at them. He talked about the shirt he was wearing (The Men), and drank from one of those weird, milk carton-looking free water thingies they were giving out, twisting it upside down as he drank, elbows at all sorts of angles, in order to drain its contents in a few seconds. His unique, wide-eyed, unhinged charisma was captivating, especially after Ward's performance from the night before. The man is all the right kinds of mad.

The music's pretty good too.

Since that day I've been a fan of the band. I was pleased, then, to see that 2011's The Monitor made it into Pitchfork's recently published People's List. It wasn't surprising to see the band doing so well after the site's heartfelt endorsement of their music. However, it interested me to read that 88% of survey respondents were, like me, male. The most represented age bracket was the one in which I find myself: 21-25. I find myself slap bang in the middle of the Pitchfork bell curve. Slap bang in the middle of the bell curve of people who are inclined to spend their time responding to polls on Pitchfork, anyway.

It was this that got me thinking about the reasons behind Titus Andronicus' popularity and if they might hold some importance to young men in particular. I began to think back to shifts in my own musical tastes and to what extent  they were a product of phases and changes I was going through to try and establish if there might be some common quality linking the demographic that loves The Monitor.

I hit puberty at the height of emo's popularity. My friends began listening to bands like Funeral for a Friend or Alexisonfire. I didn't take to the genre at first: I was quite happy with skate punk. Puberty actually went pretty well until girls came along and the derailment began. I embraced emo wholesale, its every defining characteristic finding a place amongst where I was in life and in the world at that moment in time.

Now, rather than describe where I am in life at present, I think it would make more sense to describe The Monitor. It's filled with brilliant contrasts. The band are obviously intellegent but are never arrogant about it: the record features readings from the speeches of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis which when heard at the right time can actually be surprisingly moving. Any pretentiousness however is successfully destroyed when it becomes apparent that the readings make up part of The Monitor's tongue-in-cheek "US Civil War as extended metaphor for the troubles of growing up" concept. If the monitor is indeed a concept album, the concept is loose, and it all plays out like a super camp war re-enactment.

In places the album offers thought provoking observations on the minutia of family and human relationships. In others it's completely insane. The latter half of No Future Part III's five minute run is simply the repeated line: "you will always be a loser". It's an album best listened to from start to finish because songs generally reach the seven minute mark and are constructed from often awkwardly yet always brilliantly cobbled together sections of loud and soft. Subject matter includes alcohol and drunkenness, and there are several references to "urine" and "excrement" and everything in between. It's like a sonic bar brawl. It's the sound of friends late at night, fifteen beers too many, all hammering the same four guitar chords and singing about anything. If a listener doesn't break into a smile upon reaching second to last track "...and Ever" then they can only be soulless. Listen to the album. You'll see why.

The album is chaos, the overflowing product of an underlying rage: a constant, but all too often vague, rage. The album's subjects, and perhaps audience, are summed up neatly in a line from final track The Battle of Hampton Roads - "is there a girl in this college who hasn't been raped? Is there a boy in this town who isn't exploding with hate?".

Taken in sum then, The Monitor is perfect for the 21-25 year old Pitchfork survey responder who finds himself on the brink of leaving education and/or stumbling around in employment somewhere near the bottom. The Monitor is a means of ventilation for those coming to terms with compromised dreams, disappointment, and learning to make-do. It's a record for those brutally let down by some people while finding themselves building alarmingly strong bonds with others. It's an album for those faced with new awful adult sadnesses that are simply without solution and that no amount of self involved moping will correct. It helps those trying to discover in vain that illusive thing that will make it all seem worthwhile. Every second is a visceral declaration of humanity and our right to not be okay with a world that can't live up to promise or expectation.

The Lincoln passage mentioned earlier is a good representation of the "helpful message hidden under a layer of urine soaked madness" contradiction I'm talking about. The reading goes "I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed amongst the whole human family there would not be one cheerful face left on earth." For an emotionally stunted young man, the gut reation to this statement is to laugh, to revel mawkishly in the self-indulgence of it all, and to throw alcohol at the problem. Underneath however lies a communication of solidarity: Abraham Lincoln is perhaps the world's most renowned sufferer of depression and his presence on the record might be of some tacit consolation to those faced with the problem who are for whatever reason unable or unwilling to seek help. At a time when depression and suicide in young men is on the rise, this can only be a good thing.

So, the album feels like an embodiment of an emotional state, all gathered up and spat out onto a single compact disc. It's a reflection of a very alarming and particular point in life, in the same way that emo as a genre was several years ago. For me, a recent shift (or at least expansion) of taste more generally has been very much identifiable. The music of bands like Japandroids and Fucked Up is playing a part in my life that I don't think I would have foreseen a few years ago. In 2009 if I had been told I would be listening to punk rock again by 2012 I would have seen it as a step backwards away from my perceived "artsy" indie and folk leanings. I wouldn't have been able to understand that I would develop a need for something a bit more primal and indeed useful.

Other genres and the emotional support that they provide have begun to feature more heavily than I would have once anticipated: the music of The Roots has begun to make a certain sense to me, with something about Undun immediately clicking. I would never be so deluded by self pity as to argue that I can fully relate to plights discussed within its songs, but I do think that there is a certain universality in the overall bleakness of the album. Universal too are the messages of hope that The Roots are capable of delivering elsewhere.

I'm glad that I came across Titus Andronicus this year. Are they the "end of higher education emo" for a generation of young men? Perhaps. 21-25 year olds, made up 88% of males, selected The Monitor as one of the greatest albums of our time. I suppose there's something nice about a demographic championing an album that helps us come to terms with the fact that we are just that - a demographic: a faceless mass let loose on a world that doesn't care. It could simply be that these are simply good fun songs, and that the age bracket statistics are merely a coincidence, but I hope it goes deeper than that. 

We need all the help we can get.