New Jersey rock & roll believers Titus Andronicus get top mileage from a simple idea: baiting hardcore thrust with classic-rock hooks. On their fourth album, they bear down on a 90-minute rock opera in a Quadrophenia vein about growing up, freaking out and coming to unsettled terms. A shaggy chorale, a piano ballad, organ drones and Celtic touches — including a hurtling cover of the Pogues' "A Pair of Brown Eyes" — provide variety. But the center remains frontman Patrick Stickles' desperate howl, a mix of Johnny Rotten, Paul Westerberg and Conor Oberst that sounds fittingly trounced by the end. Long may he wail.
The Most Lamentable Tragedy
Maximalist punks get even more epic on a double-disc rock opera

