Titus Andronicus, Ceremony

[HISTORICAL PUNKS] Once a punk band successfully records a concept album about a Civil War battleship, its ambitions are bound to recede. In 2010, New Jersey history buffs Titus Andronicus released The Monitor, a raucously sprawling record in which the quartet augmented its raggedly energetic tunes with old-timey instrumentation, stretched song lengths to near double digits and attempted to educate the indie classes about the legendary 19th-century American naval vessel for which the album was named. Local Business, the band's recently released follow-up, finds the group drawing back from those lofty heights, returning to the scraggly, beery-eyed glory of its debut, 2008's The Airing of Grievances. Don't confuse that with regression, though. Opening with a roaring three-song suite, the album rips from rousing Springsteenisms to shambling, New York Dolls trash-blues to Replacements-style emotional bloodletting, with singer Patrick Stickles crafting strained-throated anthems out of what reads like entries from his personal journal. So it's a smaller album than what came before it, sure. But it might be even better.