Protomartyr’s urgent statement for the times in which we live
On Protomartyr’s fourth album, “Relatives in Descent” (Domino), singer Joe Casey affirms his skill with words. He is, by turns, metaphorical, abstract, poetic. But occasionally he’s a hammer.
“Knock it down, knock it down!” he demands as he arrives at the “golden door” in “Up the Tower.” The ruler behind the door is blind to the suffering outside, and now the moment of reckoning has arrived: “The hatred he brewed within us is now crashing loud upon his throne.”
Protomartyr is not a particularly political band, nor does it make protest music. But it has made an urgent, unflinching album about the times we live in. Casey empathizes with those who have been overlooked but are making their way through the world with head-down resilience because they have no other choice. No whining allowed, but sometimes they get ticked off. Their unassuming voices are the soul of Protomartyr, a great band in which every instrument has an equal say.
With each album, the Detroit quartet retains its deceptively casual air while pulling triumphant moments out of the noise. It can also conjure surprising tenderness when you least expect, or turn darkly comic in one verse and lash out in the next.
With his suit jacket and dangling cigarette, Casey remains much like the guy down the street who only speaks up when he’s had a couple at the bar. With Protomartyr, he often sounds like he just wandered into the room and began riffing on whatever’s on his mind, while the band ebbs and surges around him. Yet this seemingly stream-of-consciousness spew is often strikingly sharp and evocative. When Casey latches on to a simple phrase or sentence, it’s hard medicine: “I don’t want to hear those vile trumpets anymore”; “everything’s fine”; “knock it down.”
Greg Ahee’s guitar ambushes the arrangements. It lunges out of the silence in “A Private Understanding” and “Windsor Hum.” Bassist Scott Davidson knows when to push the melody and when to anchor the chaos with a steady pulse. Drummer Alex Leonard complements Casey’s delivery rather than overwhelming it, his touch unerring yet spacious.
Casey sounds fed up. “Decent people don’t live like that,” he spits over a bounding bass line and spastic guitar in “Corpses in Regalia,” sick to his stomach over not just ostentatious wealth but also the indifference it breeds. “The Chuckler” alternates bright guitar figures with slate-gray distortion. The narrator tries to power through, but the situation is looking grim: “Lord, I wish there was a better ending to this joke.”
Amid the deepening anxiety, Casey looks for signs of hope and simple human kindness. He finds it in the gothic moonlight of “Night-Blooming Cereus,” but it’s only briefly reassuring.
The album’s bookend songs frame its primary theme. “A Private Understanding” suggests that for all people of conscience, the world’s inner compass feels askew. Amid “fake news” and lies that become reality if they’re repeated often enough, “Half Sister” asks, “Truth, what is it?”
“She’s trying to reach you,” Casey sings, as the album drifts away.
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