Masters of Reality: Protomartyr’s Formal Growth in the Desert

We all have our own personal stories that are directly linked to our favourite artists. Ultimately, that’s what makes them our favourite artists. These stories run deep, and in many cases are quite harrowing: my personal story is no different. Ironically, it’s perversely aligned to the themes that Protomartyr have so tersely illustrated over their six-album reign.

So here it is. August 30, 2018. Liverpool O2 Academy. Protomartyr are in town in support of their wonderful 2017 release, Relatives in Descent. Having lost so much weight through the fog of grief, anxiety and depression due to my wife’s sudden death six months prior (at the time I couldn’t even correlate the album’s title to my own circumstances), during the band’s performance my wedding ring slipped off my finger (which at the time resembled something more like a twig). Lost forever, naturally I was devastated. On the precipice. Everything seemingly damaged beyond repair.

Months had passed, and after slowly emerging from the black hole of crippling grief and sporadic suicidal thoughts, with the benefit of time and hindsight, it felt like losing the ring happened for a reason. An abstract set of circumstances, and the kind of post-apocalyptic snapshots Protomartyr have been inspired by since their 2012 debut, No Passion All Technique.

Sun 13’s Albums Quarterly #10

Through the searing force of Fun in Hi Skool, taken from their new album, Formal Growth in the Desert, singer Joe Casey underlines the pitfalls of nostalgia and its high levels of toxicity. Nostalgia has many qualities of course, but it got me thinking that perhaps it’s not the hope that kills you, it’s nostalgia. The only way of surviving is to move forward and start again, as Casey touches upon during Fun in Hi Skool and again more directly on Graft Vs. Host.

At times, what people don’t consider within the artform of music is the educational aspects of it. Where Protomartyr are concerned, I’m not sure that people know just how important they are. Through Casey’s stories that touch upon geopolitical and environmental concerns, they feed into the street-level consciousness which Protomartyr have cut through release after release. Their ability to provoke thought time and time again a constant and, often sharp, learning curve.

Interweaving urgent, buzz-saw sonics into their ever-evolving patchwork, few others in the new music sphere boast the kind of canon where a best album simply can’t be distinguished. Sure, we all have our favourites (mine is the above-noted Relatives in Descent), however there are no all-encompassing set of circumstances that arrives to this point.

In their own way, each Protomartyr album is their best, mirroring the intensity, nuance, and distinction of its predecessor. It all forms one dossier of ideas. A burgeoning saga, and over the past decade I’d argue that no one has done it better. Post-punk or no post-punk, the only thing this band is weighed down by is the number of good songs it has produced.

While the scourge of capitalism will always be well received, and Protomartyr have certainly gained milage from using it as their central theme, that doesn’t make it future proof. With a plethora of post-punk sound-alikes pilfering lines from the same hymn sheet, the message has been blunted somewhat. Bands like Protomartyr and Sleaford Mods know this all too well, successfully finding new through lines, and in doing so they continually dwarf the competition.

And it continues with Formal Growth in the Desert. The howling harmonics from guitarist, Greg Ahee; Scott Davidson’s elastic bass lines; Alex Leonard’s sharp percussive swing, all forming as a post-punk puzzle for Casey to navigate through. One minute intoxicatingly abstract, the next brutally direct, like a flashing blade through the moonlight.

Recorded at Sonic Ranch with regular producer Jake Aron alongside Ahee, while there is a hint of ‘Texas’ during the album – most notably the whiff of pedal steel that drifts throughout in much the same way the saxophone played its part during 2020’s Ultimate Success Today – Formal Growth in the Desert is yet another homage to their home town of Detroit.

Make Way starts the investigation into nostalgia and how it contributes to psychological decay. “You can grieve if you wanna/ But please don’t ruin the day / Make way for tomorrow,” Casey mumbles on the rollicking opener, and on the back of Leonard’s avalanche percussion and Ahee’s crunching choruses, Protomartyr drag us into their latest dark vortex.

And here For Tomorrow awaits. An array of bourgeoning sculptures that are instant and abstract, the majesty bleeds into Elimination Dances. A song that is most certainly a product of its time and directly influenced by the Texas surroundings from which it was conceived.

On Let’s Tip the Creator, Casey lines up the practitioners of capitalism and doesn’t miss (“Oaker Ruiksleg in the triumphal car/ Appreciate the beauty of outsider art/ While his sycophants burn in a lithium fire”). Underlining the system’s brutal framework in reducing the relevance of art, Casey is like a Rottweiler off the leash.

Noise Pollution: In Conversation with FACS’ Brian Case

The evident highlight, 3800 Tigers, is delivered with the kind of vigour from a band that has re-tooled and is re-energised. Any talk of Ultimate Success Today being their last hurrah should be put to bed on the back of a song like this. An ode to the Detroit Tigers and the dangers of not taking in the moment (“Now beat the ’Sox”), Casey unpicks the truths of many sporting teams around the world. And while sports culture has perhaps reached its most toxic levels with the aid of social media, the message here feels bigger than a bunch of overpaid specialists applying maple to leather.

Inspired by a spate of break-ins to his Detroit home, bursting with synths and guitar flange, We Know the Rats sees Casey flipping the script; his scorn quickly deflected from the assailant to the system and its constant failings. In some ways, subconsciously it loosely aligns to Ultimate Success Today’s staple track, Processed by the Boys. Sonically, The Author continues the panache and verve of We Know the Rats, as Ahee’s guitars tear through a brick wall with gale-like force.

While Formal Growth in the Desert doesn’t shy too far away from the themes that have underpinned Protomartyr’s history, through dark moments lived, the subjects of death and existential dread cut deeper than ever before. One Graft Vs. Host, Casey hasn’t been so direct and explicit, and while it makes this passage more jarring, for the first time you can feel the hope, born simply from the fact that we are still here.

Despite Graft Vs. Host’s unflinching candidness, it’s Polacrilex Kid where the most vexing question is asked. “Can you hate yourself and still deserve love?” It’s one of the most pertinent questions Casey has asked, and one that can only be posed after shaking off the existential dread that Protomartyr have been both inspired and weighed down by. Again, those flickers of hope.

Whether we all arrive at the same answer to that question is another matter but, either way, once again Formal Growth in the Desert proves Protomartyr fearless, launching themselves into the abyss in a bid to extract the purity from the morbid realities their subjects command. Essentially, it makes Protomartyr one of the most important acts on the planet. A band constantly wading through the malaise and superficialities of mass culture and calling out the bullshit.

This is why they are, indeed, the masters of reality.

Formal Growth in the Desert is out now via Domino Recordings Co. Purchase from Bandcamp.