New Jersey based indie rock band Titus Andronicus has released the latest single from their forthcoming album The Will To Live entitled “Give Me Grief.” The record is scheduled to arrive on September 30 via Merge Records. The song is accompanied by a cathartic performance music video.

In a new press release, frontman Patrick Stickles meditated on the idea of grief and how it is inextricably linked to love and vulnerability. He commented on the album and it’s underlying message, offering, “A full and rich life demands a vulnerability that will inevitably be rewarded with intense suffering. I have had to think about this a lot over the past couple years, as my father lay in a 50-day medically induced coma with no promise of his eventual awakening, or as my cousin was laid far too soon in his grave, or as I shivered one dreadful Christmas eve outside the animal hospital, hoping that a last-minute blood transfusion might save my anemic cat.” 

 He goes on to explain that he would not have been hurt so deeply by these losses if he was not open and vulnerable. He comes to the conclusion that grief is a necessary part of love that is ultimately a necessary part of life as without life there would be no love and without love there would be no life. A very philosophical yet powerful idea about becoming vulnerable as not only a musician but as a human being with intense emotions and feelings of his own.

The band will be going on a North American tour this fall with the kick off on September 24 in Atlantic City, New Jersey at the Frantic City Festival. They will travel through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Ohio before performing in Ontario and Quebec. The band will make their triumphant return to the U.S. with a show in Woodstock, New York on October 21 before continuing their trek in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine and New Hampshire. They will end their tour in Boston at the Crystal Ballroom on October 27. 

Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat