Ever since they released
No Passion All Technique in 2012,
Protomartyr have been a band more than a little obsessed with ranting about a world gone wrong, as seen from their window in one of Detroit's less scenic neighborhoods. Their fifth album, 2020's
Ultimate Success Today, came as America's growing political and racial divide was dominating the news cycle while the COVID-19 pandemic became more severe than anyone expected, and it felt like the uncomfortable musings of a paranoid discovering the world really was out to get them. It was brilliant while leaving an open question of where the band could go next, and 2023's
Formal Growth in the Desert finds them no more optimistic than usual but embracing the reality that sometimes there's nowhere to go but forward. As
Ultimate Success Today saw them expanding their tonal palette with contributions from free jazz artists
Jemeel Moondoc and
Izaak Mills,
Formal Growth features pedal steel player
William Radcliffe on nine of its twelve tracks, adding a simple but effective orchestral feel that supplements the more traditional force of
Greg Ahee's big, echoey six-string. (
Ahee, who co-produced the album with engineer
Jake Aron, said the steel was influenced by his passion for vintage spaghetti western scores). The melodies are as straightforward and muscular as ever, with more graceful structures, yet executed with the precision and dynamic that make their music so satisfying, especially the powerfully imaginative drumming of
Alex Leonard and the rich, malleable basslines of
Scott Davidson. As great as the band is, it's the vocals and lyrics of
Joe Casey that set
Protomartyr apart from their peers, and here his dramatic, compelling spiels deal with the deeply personal (the death of his mother in "Graft vs. Host" and the constant break-ins that led him to leave his longtime home in "We Know the Rats"), and the unfortunately universal (poisonous nostalgia in "Fun in Hi Skool," the cluelessness of the economic elite in "Tip the Creator," the abuse of the working class in "Fulfillment Center"), and as always, he's impassioned and literate, speak-singing with a barely simmering fury that makes room for compassion for those done wrong.
Protomartyr would almost certainly have sounded like nay-sayers even in America's salad days, but in 2023
Formal Growth in the Desert plays like another State of the Union address from this band of intelligent malcontents, and what they have to say is strikingly effective as editorial commentary and as music. ~ Mark Deming
