Patrick Stickles is a self-described manic-depressive. Thus, he has his ups and downs. These highs and lows present themselves in the musical output of his band, Titus Andronicus; a fact with which Stickles is quite familiar. However, the New Jersey native returned to his full creative form this year with the release of the ridiculously ambitious The Most Lamentable Tragedy. The 92-minute epic is in the form of a rock-opera with a protagonist struggling with an identical version of himself; all serving as a metaphor for manic-depression. The album has gotten rave reviews, and has appeared on many year end lists. Stickles, however, is not one to mince words, and remains realistic about his future and current musical success. In an interview with Stereogum, the lead singer of Titus Andronicus expounds on his experiences and perceptions of the past year.
When asked by Stereogum if the band would stick around any longer, Stickles replied, "I hope so. I don't know what I would do otherwise. But people are very fickle nowadays. We didn't achieve a huge consensus, like I said. But that's less important nowadays, for an artist on our level. It's just a long game that we're playing. There's not much we can do as a rock 'n' roll band, with the kind of interests we got, to like, suddenly leap up to some new plateau and now life is suddenly super easy."
Stickles continued, speaking of the likelihood of more Titus songs in the future, saying "Yeah, I hope so. I hope that we will. We're picking up more people, we're picking up more supporters as we go along. It's a long game, it's a slow process. It'd be nice to level up to some new plateau. That's a little bit of a fantasy. We'll see next year, you know? We had a little blip, there, where people who maybe previously hadn't been interested in us were interested for a moment, but that moment is now over."
