In my review of Protomartyr’s third album, The Agent Intellect (2015), I said they’re “a difficult band to get into” thanks to Joe Casey’s unmelodic monotone delivery and bleak songs that can all too easily blur into gray shadows. A focused listen, however, reveals their artistry and lyrics rich in imagery. The band’s potential has flowered gradually, each album better than the last, and here we are with their fifth, and man, does it pack a whallop.
The prescient lyrics referencing abusive law enforcement and “a foreign disease washed upon the beach” (“Processed By The Boys”) and “Mass for the shut-ins, the dread of sleep/It’s on ice, but it won’t keep” (“June 21”), recorded a year ago, will understandably hog the attention. But the music is the real star here. It finds the band at their most powerful not because it’s the loudest or noisiest. Instead, the band enhances their impact by expanding dynamics and introducing more breathing space. Guest musicians cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, experimental/free jazz reed players Jemeel Moondoc and Izaak Mills are used sparingly, adding beauty and accessibility, even with dissonance.
The result is their simultaneously most intense and listenable music so far. The closest peer that comes to mind is the ferocious originality of the post-Drones project Tropical Fuck Storm balancing darkness and light, as we hear in “June 21” when guest vocalist Half Waif sweetens the doom of the chorus, “Summer in the city/Bring me low.” Casey also introduces more melodic crooning than ever before. Let’s not get crazy here, he’s never gonna be a Sinatra, but there are now hooks to be found on tunes like “Modern Business Hymns,” which introduces a lovely, quiet bridge three minutes in, building to a crescendo that’ll have fists pumping, if they ever get to perform this to more than ten people.
No less than six songs were given creative video treatments. At first I thought they were all singles, but I think all the tracks will get videos eventually. Every track offers unique pleasures, such as one of my favorites, “Tranquilizer,” with it’s late night crickets, distant horns and overdriven fuzz bass that lend a noirish vibe, or perhaps a ritual performed by Savage Republic, before it explodes into a furious punk rager with terse lyrics. The smoky, elegiac “Worm In Heaven” is a fantastic closer, the spectre of Protomartyr’s potential solidified from grey mist into truly great, memorable songs, hidden no more.
