Protomartyr Formal Growth in the Desert Review: Expansion into Uncharted Terrain

Protomartyr has absorbed decades of punk and post-punk history into a gloomy, occasionally playful, and often funny body of work. The J. Robert Oppenheimer-adorned cover of their 2012 debut, No Passion All Technique, signaled the apocalyptic tenor of the Detroit post-punk band’s music as they painted a vivid portrait of their hometown, brought to life by Joe Casey’s sardonic wit and writerly ambition. Protomartyr’s 2020 album Ultimate Success Today expanded the scope of the group’s music by incorporating disparate styles and dynamics, a trajectory that continues on their latest, Formal Growth in the Desert.

After more than a decade, Casey’s haunted croon has traded some of its baritone menace for warm familiarity. “Welcome to the hungry earth,” he semi-deadpans on the album’s opening track, “Make Way.” Guitarist Greg Ahee accompanies Casey with a drunk-tank arpeggio, overlaid with sinuous single-note bends and bright chords. The song’s predictably abstracted, though not indecipherable, bridge alludes to “the feast,” a metaphor for the good life that’s become increasingly inaccessible for today’s working class: “We’ll be polishing the plates…You can grieve if you wanna/But please don’t ruin the day.”

Themes of inequality are reprised on the careening “For Tomorrow,” on which Casey laments the pressures of those unlucky enough to have been born without a trust fund, forgoing cheap platitudes to instead encourage us to “consider the ant” so we can “think about loss.” The tumbling swirl of “Fulfillment Center” cuts to the empty promise of the American dream in the 21st century, an existence that, as Protomartyr sees it, is only made bearable by doomed togetherness: “As we’re lying in the car/And the frost crawls slowly over us…We can close our eyes/Escape the dream.” Elsewhere, the sonorous “We Know the Rats” describes societal and spiritual decay amid increasing commodification and the hoarding of wealth by the mega-rich.

There’s long been a political edge to Protomartyr’s doom-and-gloom art rock, and it’s heartening that the band continues to avoid sloganeering and boring moralism. There is, though, an unbecoming juvenilia to “Fun in Hi Skool,” exemplified by the title’s misspelling. The song’s anti-jock musings—“Athletic amateurs will damage you if you say the wrong thing”—might ring true for the band’s Gen-X vocalist, but they feel a little trite in an era where the divisions that previously governed public education have long been replaced by new ones. Still, the track’s jittery drum beat and howling soundscapes offer sonic pleasures where the lyrics falter.

Bending the album’s emotional arc toward the conciliatory, the epic closer “Rain Garden” begins with a rush of dissonant guitars and Alex Leonard’s roiling drums, until it slowly opens up into impressionistic scenes of loneliness that are ultimately illuminated by love. “Silent cars astray, pregnant with lonely riders…Loneliness can maim,” a somber Casey sings before concluding that “[he is] deserving of love” and that “love has found [him].” “Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me before I go,” he implores, evoking the Cure’s 1987 album as sweeping synths gently cascade around him. It’s a beautifully optimistic conclusion from post-punk’s prophets of doom.