Titus Andronicus mastermind Patrick Stickles has long created punk-rock that eschewed one of punk’s core values: simplicity. This is a guy whose music is fast and furious, yet whose breakthrough record was about The Civil War and whose last album was a 29-song, 90-minute rock opera. Now, in maybe his most punk-move yet, Stickles has created A Productive Cough, which is not a punk rock set at all. This reinvented Titus Andronicus could be a bar band setting up residency at some dive where all the drunks are poets and the jukebox only plays The Replacements. The seven-track A Productive Cough thumps with bluesy riffing (and even enthusiastic soloing), honky-tonk piano, squawking horns and gang vocals that truly sound as if they were recorded in that aforementioned bar at 2 a.m. In the loose, swaggering “Real Talk,” everyone’s sloppily raising a glass, hollering the chorus: “If life is as tough as the last couple months, we’re in for a real rough year.” It’s a drown-your-sorrows type of tune that’s so achingly true it’s tempting to sing along, no matter where you are. “Above the Bodega (Local Business)” finds Stickles lamenting that he “can’t keep a secret from the guy at the store downstairs,” who knows about all the liquor and cigarettes bought—complete with “sha-la-la’s” from backup singers. A Productive Cough isn’t for everyone. It’s sloppy, down-and-dirty rock-and-roll barely held together by Stickles’ love-it-or-hate-it howl. But if that’s your thing, then this album’s a blast.