Day two of Le Guess Who? 2015 and the big guns of the weekend were getting rolled out with some potentially ear-splitting acts on offer later in the evening's programme.

First port of call though was Moira to see the earliest act of the day, the homegrown project of songwriters Thjis Kuijken and Geert van der Velde - Black Oak. Think Buffalo Springfield and you'll be pretty close to the mutually beneficial and harmonious semi-acoustic americana they and their fellow players produce. Perhaps at times lyrically over-simplistic theirs was nonetheless a warm and engaging show.

On to the first of the bigger acts & more Canadian performers as The Besnard Lakes appeared in the Ronda at Tivoli Vredenburg. Here then was the first oddity of the night - sound at a moderate level and ample space to walk around freely in the upper reaches of the hall. Not that the band cared as they turned in as tight a performance as expected but for my money they're better appreciated in slightly more intimate surroundings and with greater volume.

Upstairs to the Pandora next for the unknown quantity that is Kaki King. Visually she takes the everything-produced-by-one-guitar thing to a new level as the instrument is fixed in place to allow it to also be utilised for projections and with the larger ones behind her the show realises her current project The Neck Is A Bridge To The Body. For me though if you've seen one person sample slapping the body of their guitar to get the drumbeat etc. you've seen them all.

A swift cycle to see more of the Kicking The Habit programme at Moira found up and comers Hooton Tennis Club just getting into position. Clearly an unknown quantity in Utrecht they didn't enjoy the largest of crowds & fell foul early on of a lack of spare guitar strings but you can't be too harsh on a band wherein one member sports a Brudenell Social Club t-shirt and which performs with such gusto (particularly 'Up In The Air').

Titus Andronicus were the second act of the night in the Ronda and were still running through the soundcheck when I got back there (interesting use of Grand Funk Railroad and 'Tarzan Boy' for that) so you had that odd experience of a band of their level all being on stage already then leaving to come back a little later as if none of us had been able to see them prior. They've a lot of songs to get through so there's no messing about once they return and energy aplenty being expended by all concerned. 'I Lost My Mind (+@)' and the rest are greatly appreciated by the main body of the crowd but again there's not the level of volume you'd expect and movement around the hall is comfortably achieved.

The reverse, at least as far as movement is concerned, is the case from now on at the Pandora. Protomartyr pack the place out, resulting in a one in/one out barrier having to be manned at the foot of the stairs. For my money the sound they were provided with was a little too clean, thereby making the overall performance seem a little pedestrian in places. Given the crowd reaction that's probably quite a minority opinion though.

Handily with the use of a bike this year the Tivoli de Helling is sooner reached than in years previous so squeezing in at the back of the rammed hall to take in some of The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown takes no time at all. A performer for whom time seems to have stood still he's all over the stage, whooping up the audience (who need little encouragement), removing the keyboard from its stand so its player needs to come with it to keep the music going as it's the most important element of the band's sound and other antics. Even at this early stage people are calling out for 'Fire' but I presume that's always held over till the very end as I head off back into the city after the spirited version of 'I Put A Spell On You'. Definitely a highlight act of the weekend.

Once back at the main Tivoli the popularity of the Pandora means I've now failed to see Metz twice at Le Guess Who? With no wish to mill around in the vague 'queue' I head downstairs to the Ronda to see what Belgium's Evil Superstars are all about. The festival blurb mentions them in the same breath as dEUS, an act I've never got to grips with, and it turns out that I can't really do that with Evil Superstars either, despite their enjoyably cartoonish rear projections. If the Foo Fighters decided to start employing jazz time signatures and funkier basslines then this is I think the result you'd get.

Leaving Ronda as quickly as I arrived does at least allow time for some food from the Just Like Your Mom concession. The vegan carrot cake was grand but the jury's still out on the sausage roll. It also makes it possible to beat the rush and get into Pandora in good time for Viet Cong, who once more pack the place out but don't get the volume they deserve although they're not to everyone's taste as it's "five minutes of my life I won't get back" according to one audience member. Musing on whether some of today's programming should have been swapped around keeps me occupied on the cycle home.

Two figures exert a substantial influence over Titus Andronicus’s second album The Monitor. The obvious one is Bruce Springsteen – America’s most famous chronicler of longing and automatic godfather to all New Jersey Bands. A nod to The Boss comes in the first verse of the opening track ‘A More Perfect Union’, when lead singer Patrick Stickles rasps “Because tramps like us, baby, we were born to die”.

Springsteen is there, but you almost feel inconveniently so, as if the band can’t quite figure out his place in their history. Far more interesting is the influence of the other figure - Abraham Lincoln the 16th President of the United States. Lincoln’s impact ranges from the obvious: he was President during the US Civil war, to the more obscure: Stickles has admitted to being influenced by Lincoln’s rhetorical techniques.

Prior to its release the hype that The Monitor generated largely came from the view that it was a concept album, which I suppose it is, but not in a ‘70s bloated prog-rock kind of way. The band use the idea of a long-ago war as a motif to frame the wars that rage inside the album’s protagonists: love vs hate, old vs new etc.

Throughout the album there are frequent allusions to conflict, both internal and external. Amid hurtling guitars and staccato drums ‘Richard II’ eloquently describes how collectively people can do hideous things to one another using mob mentality as an excuse, but actually the crimes you commit are “Nobody’s fault but your own”.

On ‘Four Score and Seven’ Stickles wearily tells us that “This is a war we can’t win/After ten thousand years it’s still us against them”. All appears futile until the brass section fades out and the guitar kicks in, the blood starts to pump and Stickles issues a rallying cry “I’m depraved and disgusting, I spew like a fountain/I’ve been debased, defaced, disgraced and destroyed”. It’s a song as epic as ‘Jungleland’ and as affecting as ‘Atlantic City’.

However, it’s not always as deep as this and the band have the ability to switch focus from the macro to the micro without it feeling contrived. ‘Theme from “Cheers”’ is an old-fashioned Replacements-esque homage to a local boozer, with Stickles’s sounding uncannily like Conor Oberst as the violins play in the background and the guitars create a folksy atmosphere. The only song that doesn’t quite feel right is ‘To Old Friends and New’, a country-tinged duet Wye Oak’s Jenn Wassner that feels almost like an after-thought used to break-up the album and check its speed.

It’s fitting that both Bruce and Abe should feature in the album’s last word ‘The Battle of Hampton Roads’. Springsteen gets a name check in an admission that you can’t really escape your past and an extract from Lincoln’s first inaugural address is quoted at the start. At over 14 minutes long it is a little self-indulgent but you can’t help but get swept along as the song rises and falls like a ship on the ocean before erupting into a cacophony of bagpipes and guitars.

While it’s certainly not flawless The Monitor is a magnificent achievement for two reasons: firstly it manages to cover universal themes yet somehow stays intensely personal and secondly it flat-out rocks.