“I want to be the Patti Smith of now, with something like ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Nigger’ blaring out of kids’ speakers. I fantasize about that, but I’m not going to be that. I’m just not that dangerous,” Bradford Cox told me in an interview for The Big Takeover back in 2008. While it’s defeatist to live in a world measuring yourself to your idols, Cox has carved out an idiosyncratic, challenging, and even dangerous milieu for himself making great records, from the rather underwhelming Turn It Up Faggot in 2005, on through his newest, released this week, the absolutely stunning Monomania.