“So when I leave Boston, my tail is between my legs. After deep cuts of patience and drunk to the dregs. And now I'm heading west on 84 again. And I'm as much of an asshole as I've ever been. And there is still nothing about myself I respect. Still haven't done anything I did not later regret. I have a hand and a napkin when I'm looking for sex. And that's no one to talk to when feeling depressed. And so now when I drink, I'm going to drink to excess. And when I smoke, I will smoke gaping holes in my chest. And when I scream, I will scream until I'm gasping for breath. And when I get sick, I will stay sick for the rest. Of my days peddling hate at the back of a Chevy Express. Each one a fart in the face of your idea of success. And if this be thy will, then fuckin' pass me the cup. And I'm sorry dad, no, I'm not making this up!”
I was taking Lexapro at the time the album came out, still trying to make sense of my depression. At a Titus Andronicus concert, Patrick Stickles talked about being on Lexapro too. It was one of those rare moments where an artist you admire says something that directly validates your own experience. The Monitor wasn't just an album—it was proof that someone else understood the storm inside my head.
Today, it's my #2 album of all time. And honestly, it could be #1 on any given day. Its themes of despair, anger, self-destruction, and fleeting hope resonate more deeply now than they did back when I first heard it. In a lot of ways, my relationship with this album mirrors the themes Stickles explores—disillusionment, self-awareness, and that stubborn feeling that you're just never quite good enough. When I first discovered The Monitor, I was just starting to understand my depression. Since then, I've faced major life changes, setbacks, and personal struggles, and wrestled with countless internal wars. And through it all, these songs have been there, like a slightly unhinged but deeply honest friend saying, Yeah, it really is that bad sometimes, but let's keep going anyway.
And let's talk about how the album sounds. It doesn't just sit quietly in the corner waiting for you to feel something. The guitars snarl like wild animals, the drums hit like cannon fire, and Stickles' voice? It's raw, cracked, and perfectly imperfect. There's this punk energy that collides head-on with Springsteen-like ambition—big, messy, anthemic songs that make you want to scream along, even if you're not entirely sure what you're screaming about. The production is intentionally rough around the edges, mirroring the chaos of mental illness. Listening feels like being pulled into a fever dream where self-loathing has a marching band.
The Spoken Word Segments: Framing the Chaos
One of the most unique elements of The Monitor is the spoken word segments that appear between songs. These passages, drawn from historical speeches, letters, and literary sources, serve as both a narrative device and an emotional anchor. They don’t just add depth to the album’s Civil War metaphor—they frame the personal battles playing out within each song.
The album begins with an excerpt from Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum Address:
"From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some transatlantic giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe and Asia could not, by force. Take a drink from the Ohio River. Or set a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever, or die by suicide"
It’s an ominous warning, setting the stage for an album obsessed with self-destruction. Lincoln was speaking about the dangers of internal decay—the idea that the greatest threats to a nation come from within. That idea applies just as easily to institutions, relationships, and the human mind. The album takes this concept and runs with it: the destruction is internal, whether it’s a country tearing itself apart, a failing company, the slow disintegration of a marriage, or the suffocating weight of self-loathing.
Another devastating spoken-word moment arrives before No Future Part Three, when a passage from Abraham Lincoln is recited:
"I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth."
Hearing this sentiment spoken aloud in the middle of The Monitor is crushing. Lincoln—arguably the most revered leader in American history—was haunted by despair, and here we are, 150 years later, feeling the exact same thing. Depression, hopelessness, and internal war are timeless. This passage perfectly sets up the themes of No Future Part Three, which dives headfirst into the numbness and exhaustion of living with depression.
Perhaps the most devastating spoken-word moment comes in A Pot In Which To Piss, when a passage is read over the closing chaos. Walt Whitman’s words about burying fallen soldiers add a sense of tragic finality to the album’s themes of loss, making it clear that no matter how much we fight, some battles will always end in ruin.
These segments elevate The Monitor beyond a mere punk rock album. They make it feel like a historical epic—one where the war is both external and internal, past and present, deeply personal yet universally understood.
A More Perfect Union: The Futility of Escape
The album opens with A More Perfect Union (I wrote a Best Song Ever about this song in 2021), and right out of the gate, it's like Stickles is screaming directly at me. Back then, I was still fresh to San Francisco, full of hope that maybe a new city would fix whatever was broken inside me. Spoiler: it didn't. The narrator leaves New Jersey for Boston, thinking distance will fix his demons. I knew that move.
"Because where I'm going to now, no one can ever hurt me / Where the well of human hatred is shallow and dry."
Yeah, right. The guitars come in hot and relentless. It feels like someone's kicking down your door, and you're just standing there, half-dressed, wondering what the hell is happening. The Springsteen references in this song aren't subtle—there's even a distorted nod to Born to Run—but instead of dreaming about the open road, Stickles snarls, "Tramps like us, baby we were born to die." It's like he took Bruce's romanticism and doused it in gasoline.
But it’s these lines that gut me every time:
“'Cause if I come in on a donkey, let me go out on a gurney. I want to realize too late I never should have left New Jersey.”
Followed by these lines:
"I sense the enemy, they're rustling around in the trees / I thought I had gotten away but they followed me to 02143 / Woe, oh woe is me, no one knows the trouble I see."
That feeling of trying to escape, only to realize that whatever you're running from is still right there with you—I knew that feeling intimately. Depression, self-doubt, regret—they don’t stay behind when you move somewhere new. They follow. And the way Stickles delivers these lines, exhausted and full of bitter recognition, makes it hit even harder.
No Future Part Three: Depression, Lexapro, and the Endless Loop
Patrick Stickles has said that No Future Part Three is about being on Lexapro, and when I was on Lexapro at the time this album came out, hearing him say that at a concert made it hit even harder. It’s one thing to hear a song and feel like it gets you—it’s another to hear the artist confirm that they were experiencing exactly what you were.
"Everything makes me nervous / And nothing feels good for no reason / Waking up, it's rarely worth it / The same dark dread every morning"
That opening line is such a painfully accurate articulation of depression. It doesn’t just describe feeling bad—it describes that empty, inexplicable dread that so many people with depression know all too well. There’s no reason, there’s no logic, and yet, everything feels unbearable. It perfectly captures the sense of being stuck in a state of discomfort without an obvious cause.
"I used to look myself in the mirror at the end of every day / But I took the one thing that made me beautiful and threw it away."
That line is brutal. Depression medication helped me get out of bed, but it also muted everything, making me feel like a ghost of myself. Stickles captures that feeling perfectly—the dissociation, the sense that you’ve surrendered some essential part of yourself just to function. The way the song builds to that relentless, looping chant—"You will always be a loser"—feels like intrusive thoughts taking over. It’s exhausting. It’s suffocating. And when I was in the thick of it, it was exactly what my brain sounded like.
Richard II: Self-Loathing and the Weight of Regret
Richard II is another song that hits me hard. The sneering, bitter tone captures the essence of spiraling self-loathing, and the lyrics feel like they were ripped straight from my own intrusive thoughts.
"Of course, you have never been to blame for the various horrible things that you did / You may have gotten away with them too, if not for those meddling kids."
That sarcastic, almost mocking delivery gets under my skin. It’s the voice in my head that refuses to let things go, that keeps rehashing mistakes and failures long after they should have faded. There’s something about the way Stickles makes self-loathing sound like an unstoppable force that I completely understand.
Then there’s the gut punch:
“And whatever amount you paid / For your many distractions, well, it was too much/ And at the end of the day/ To whatever extent you hate yourself, it isn't enough”
That line lingers. Depression has a way of convincing you that no amount of self-criticism is sufficient, that you deserve every bad thing coming to you. It’s a brutal, unfiltered moment in an album that thrives on emotional honesty.
Musically, the song is raw, aggressive, and filled with tension. The guitar work feels jagged, almost like it’s tripping over itself, while the drumming pounds away like a relentless internal monologue. It’s claustrophobic and chaotic in the best possible way.
"I will not deny my humanity / I'll be rolling in it like a pig in feces."
This line is almost defiant, a moment where Stickles acknowledges his flaws but refuses to pretend he’s anything else. There’s something strangely liberating about that. It’s as if he’s saying, Fine, I’m disgusting. But at least I know it. The song doesn’t offer a solution, just a cold, unvarnished look at what it feels like to be trapped in a cycle of self-loathing.
By the time the track ends, there’s no catharsis, no resolution. Just the lingering weight of regret and an uneasy acknowledgment that this battle isn’t ending anytime soon.
A Pot in Which to Piss: The Brutal Reality of Failure
This song is one of the most devastating moments on the album, a ruthless examination of ambition, disillusionment, and the public nature of failure. A Pot in Which to Piss hits differently for me now than it did when I first heard it. When my startup went through a firesale, this song became the soundtrack to that crushing realization: you can do everything right, make all the right choices, and still end up with nothing.
The build is up is awesome and captures thinking you’re going to be ok. You’re going to make it through. You might actually feel success. This beginning is 2020-2021 for me.
“It was a pretty good GPA/We got a couple of good grades/And it sounded like a pretty good seven inch/And winter didn't seem so cold/And I had a smile for everyone I know/ I was starting to get comfortable in the place that I'm in.”
But then….
"Nothing means anything anymore / Everything is less than zero."
That lyric feels like a gut punch. Depression already has a way of making everything seem pointless, but when you experience a major personal or professional failure, that feeling intensifies. The belief that hard work will guarantee success is a lie I’ve had to unlearn over and over. Stickles gets at this with brutal precision:
"You can't make it on merit, not on merit and merit alone."
That line has echoed in my head for years. I was told that even if you do everything right, things might not work out—but experiencing it firsthand was a different beast. A Pot in Which to Piss isn’t just about personal failure; it’s about how the world watches, judges, and discards you when you fall.
Or even the preceeding lines:
“Let them see you struggle and they're going to tear you apart. You ain't never been no virgin, kid, you were fucked from the start.”
The way the song builds in intensity mirrors that rising frustration. Stickles sounds like he’s about to lose his voice by the time he screams:
"They're all gonna be laughing at you!"
The public nature of failure can be unbearable. This song captures that better than anything I’ve ever heard.
Four Score and Seven: The Never-Ending War
This song is a perfect storm of relentless instrumentation and brutal honesty. The alliteration in the lyrics makes the song feel like an unrelenting assault, a verbal battering ram against the listener. Every word feels like it's pushing you deeper into the pit of despair, reinforcing the album’s themes of self-destruction and exhaustion.
"We're all depraved and disgusting," I spew like a fountain "And debased, defaced, disgraced and destroyed Most of all disappointed" I say atop this mountain As I urinate into the void Fuck I'm frustrated, freaking out something fierce Would you help me, I'm hungry, I suffer and I starve Oh I struggle and I stammer 'till I'm up to my ears In miserable quote unquote art
This verse is pure frustration, and the way Stickles delivers it—rapid, breathless, seething—makes it impossible to ignore. The song captures the feeling of battling against everything, including yourself, and losing. The imagery of "urinate into the void" is a sharp, grotesque way of describing futility. It’s an admission that all this effort, all this suffering, may not mean anything, and yet, we keep screaming into the abyss.
Then comes the line that hits like a hammer:
"It's still us against them / And they're winning."
At first, I thought this line was about external conflict—about the world, about politics, about class war. But as time passed, I realized this battle is entirely internal. It’s a war between the version of myself that wants to be better and the version that wants to self-destruct. And most days, that second version wins. That’s what this song sounds like: the slow, grinding realization that you might be fighting a war you can’t win.
The music only reinforces this. The pounding drums and walls of guitar feel like they’re closing in on you. It’s one of the most intense songs on the album, and yet it’s also one of the most cathartic. It forces you to confront the ugliness inside yourself and makes you scream it out loud.
This is a song that doesn’t just express despair—it drowns you in it.
To Old Friends and New: The Exhaustion of Holding On
This song always felt like a conversation I’d had a hundred times before. Two people, too tired to keep fighting but too scared to let go. The exhaustion seeps through every note.
"Like the time traveler who killed his grandfather, these cycles are bringing me down."
That cycle—of arguing, of trying to fix things, of failing and trying again—was one I knew well. The back-and-forth tension in this song mirrors that feeling perfectly. The push-and-pull of a relationship that’s crumbling but not quite gone yet.
Jenn Wasner’s guest vocals add an important counterpoint. There’s a detachment in her voice, a sense of quiet resignation that makes the song feel even heavier. It’s not a screaming match; it’s two people looking at each other and realizing there’s nothing left to say.
"Well, it’s alright the way that you live."
That repeated phrase in the outro feels like a form of forced acceptance. It’s what you say when you know things aren’t okay, but you can’t change them. It’s the kind of thing I told myself over and over near the end of my marriage, trying to convince myself that maybe things could still work out when, deep down, I knew they wouldn’t.
The slow build of the instrumentation, the way it swirls and grows but never quite explodes, mirrors that feeling of being stuck in limbo. There’s no resolution here—just the quiet realization that something is slipping away, whether you’re ready or not.
The Battle of Hampton Roads: 14 Minutes of Emotional Carnage
The closing track of The Monitor, The Battle of Hampton Roads, is nothing short of a masterpiece. Clocking in at over 14 minutes, it is not only the longest song on the album but also its emotional and thematic peak. This song isn't just the conclusion to The Monitor—it’s the full unraveling of everything that came before it, a slow-motion collapse wrapped in defiant desperation.
The song opens with a chaotic burst of energy before settling into the first verse, where Stickles’ voice wavers between anger and exhaustion:
"The things I used to love I have come to reject / The things I used to hate I have learned to accept."`
This lyric devastates me every time. It perfectly encapsulates the feeling of becoming numb to the things that once mattered most. Depression does this—it erodes passion, dulls love, makes joy feel like a distant memory. It’s a quiet resignation, an acknowledgment that the person you were is no longer there.
“I think the wrong people got a hold of your brain. When it was nothing but a piece of putty. Though try as you may but you will always be a tourist. Little buddy.”
The next section of the song is a whirlwind of self-destruction. Stickles delivers a stream-of-consciousness rant about drinking, smoking, screaming until he’s gasping for breath. It’s overwhelming, and that’s exactly the point. The war imagery throughout the album culminates here—except now, the battle isn’t just metaphorical. It’s Stickles versus himself.
"So now when I drink, I’m going to drink to excess / And when I smoke, I will smoke gaping holes in my chest."
This is not rebellion—it’s surrender. The overwhelming wall of instrumentation behind his words makes it sound like he’s drowning in his own thoughts, giving in to every destructive impulse just to feel something. It’s the musical equivalent of spiraling, of reaching the point where even self-harm feels like the only option left.
As the song continues, the theme of loss becomes painfully personal. The most crushing moment comes when Stickles sings:
"But, my enemy, it’s your name on my lips as I go to sleep / And I know what little I’ve known of peace / Yes, I’ve done to you what you’ve done to me / And I’d be nothing without you, my darling, please don’t ever leave."
For a long time, I thought this line was about depression itself—the strange, paradoxical relationship you develop with your own suffering. But over time, I realized something else: this line is about someone specific. It’s about the person you’ve fought with, the one you’ve hurt and been hurt by, the one you can’t imagine living without, even as everything crumbles around you.
For me, this was my ex-wife. Even as our relationship fell apart, even as I knew the end was inevitable, I still had that desperate, irrational need to hold on. The war might have been lost, but surrender didn’t feel like an option.
Then, in the song’s final stretch, the bagpipes arrive. It’s an unexpected but brilliant choice, turning the song into a kind of dirge, a funeral procession for everything that’s been lost. The noise reaches an unbearable peak before fading into silence—no resolution, no victory, just the sound of collapse.
In the end, The Battle of Hampton Roads is the perfect closer for The Monitor. It’s long, messy, heartbreaking, and brutally honest. It doesn’t try to make sense of the wreckage—it just shows you what it looks like to stand in the middle of it and scream until your voice gives out.
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