The New Titus Andronicus Song Is a Bluesy Ode to Bodegas

Ahead of their new album A Productive Cough, Titus Andronicus have shared a second single, “Above the Bodega (Local Business),” a bluesy, horn-heavy strummer that continues to presage an exciting new direction for the band.

Bandleader Patrick Stickles explains the new tune as follows:

All the songs on [A Productive Cough] deal with the realities of life, as I understand them, in my adopted hometown of New York City, and one quality that does much to define New York City life is the access to 24-hour consumption. The first floor of the apartment building in which I live is occupied by a deli-grocery, to which I give my patronage several times a day. As a result, I have developed a particular understanding with the staff there which I have not so far heard articulated in song. Thusly, I took it upon myself to write the “ultimate” song explicating the bodega clerk-patron relationship.

When pressed to elaborate further, Stickles adds:

More and more, we are defined by the things which we consume, and those who facilitate that consumption may glimpse a more truthful view of ourselves than the carefully curated image we share with our loved ones. No one knows the depths of my vice better than they who oversee the transactions which make it possible—in this way, the deli clerk knows me better than my own mother.