Titus Andronicus, Free Energy, Shakes

(Tractor) If you only listen to one album inspired by the Civil War this year, well, sorry, Matmos. If you only go to see one Springsteen-echoing New Jersey act this week, well, sorry, Gaslight Anthem. Garden State band Titus Andronicus's recent sophomore album, The Monitor, takes the War Between the States as the loose thematic underpinning for a raucous and winning folk-punk album that has less to do with history, whether 19th century or Springsteenian, than it does with what it feels like to be alive and struggling at it right now. Frontman Patrick Stickles's vocal shudder and vague populist rage, and the band's fried electric guitars recall Conor Oberst's excellent old agit-prop rock act Desaparecidos, while the band's beery, gutter-mouthed ballads—lines like "I am covered in urine and excrement, but I'm alive" sung over a honky-tonk piano and the slow, steady saw of a fiddle—bring to mind Against Me! before they went all soft. Shit's on fire like Sherman's March, y'all. ERIC GRANDY

People Under the Stairs, Helladope, Gran Rapids, Dev from Above

(Neumos) Grab the keys to the DeLorean, y'all; take two steps into the future with Helladope and one step into the past with People Under the Stairs. PUTS put in work to be sure, and they've been doing it since the release of their undeniably feel-good album The Next Step in '99. Next Step features "San Francisco Knights," a track showing off the pinnacle of the PUTS formula: a breezy, understated beat and smoothed-out nuts-and-bolts raps (for another example, peep "Acid Raindrops" off O.S.T.). They stick to their formula a little too well, which has unfortunately led to them releasing the same album a few times over. Still, PUTS know what they can do, and, as LL says, they're doing it and doing it and doing it well. Helladope haven't been around long enough to reveal a formula, but their back-to-the-future rap is sure to stand in stark but sturdy contrast to People Under the Stairs' throwback steez. KALEB GUBERNICK

Butts, Mattress, Columboid, Pony Time

(Comet) Something about the combination of bands on this lineup gives me crazy ideas for making a porn short for HUMP!, The Stranger's annual amateur porn film competition. I mean, can't you just see it?! Someone in a Christopher Columbus outfit (with assless chaps, of course) goes to local gay bar, you know, the one with the horse motif, and then... wait, where was I? Oh yeah. This show at the Comet! Pony Time are one of my new favorite-est local bands. Partly because they remind me, in all the best ways, of SF garage-kings Thee Oh Sees, and also because they have a killer song called "Skate Witch." Have you seen my all-time favorite-est YouTube clip, "Skate Witches"? If you haven't, go watch it immediately. You can thank me later. KELLY O

And there's always more in our complete music calendar listings.