New Jersey punks Titus Andronicus recorded their landmark 2010 album The Monitor with producer Kevin McMahon at Marcata Recording in New Paltz. Last year, the band returned to the converted barn to cut the seven-song A Productive Cough, which is slated for release this March.

For the new album, singer-songwriter and front man Patrick Stickles has steered the band away from its trademark uproarious anthems and into comparatively calmer, more balladic waters given to airy piano, moaning sax, and chiming bells. Among the guest players onboard this time out are local cello whiz Jane Scarpantoni (Lou Reed, R.E.M.).

In this excerpt from an hour-long making-of documentary due out on February 26, the group lays down the eight-minute lead single, “Number One (in New York)”:

A Productive Cough is officially out on March 2 on Merge Records and is available for preorder now (a limited color-vinyl LP edition includes a bonus seven-inch of the band’s nine-minute version of Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”). A scaled-down, acoustic edition of Titus Andronicus featuring Stickles and pianist Rick Maguire will kick off the band’s spring tour at BSP in Kingston on March 7. For more information, visit http://titusandronicus.net/.

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