MUSIC
BY WILL KENNEDY
HORN BLOWERS
America’s best and most difficult rock
band plays Hi-Fi
D
etroit’s Protomartyr might be America’s greatest
rock band. They also might not be. Either way, Pro-
tomartyr vocalist Joe Casey says he doesn’t really
care.
“When we started this band,” Casey tells me
over the phone, “we had no illusions we were going to be
in the back of limousines and playing arenas and things like
that. The bands that we like were never the most popular
things on Earth.”
Protomartyr is touring the band’s latest release, and first
for Domino records, Relatives in Descent. The album is
dense, fiercely intelligent post-punk for our time, offering
deep rewards upon repeat listening.
In it, Casey’s voice, at first a somewhat opaque, low
and muttering baritone, shows surprising versatility. Some-
times it has the punched-in-the-nose quality of Joe Strum-
mer, other times the art-punk sing/talk of The Fall’s Mark
E. Smith. And still other times he manages to be an artful
gutter-crooner, slumped by his own thoughts and the weight
of the world.
Against hot-shit, death-disco, punk-funk grooves, gui-
tarist Greg Ahee balances deft, jazzy solos on “Here is
The Thing” as well as caterwauling feedback on “Windsor
Hum.”
Over it all, Casey paints dystopian pictures with his
words. Not a lot of bands (maybe none ever) have name-
dropped Heraclitus the Obscure, as Casey does on album-
opener “A Private Understanding.” And, throughout, his
poetry is similarly dark, highly relevant and thoughtful. It’s
been a long time since a rock lyricist this unique has come
along.
The abrupt change-up between the relatively mellow and
gothic “Night-Blooming Cereus” to the straight-up punk
pounder “Male Plague” is just enough rock ’n’ roll nonsense
to help deal with this crazy fucked-up world. From “Male
Plague,” Casey spits “Every boy wants to be a cop / male
plague, male plague” and “Everybody know it’s gonna kill
you some day.” You can’t help but think of Vegas shooters.
In several instances on Descent, Casey repeats the phrase
“horn blower.” He says this comes from childhood anxieties
but also our age of social media and shout-’em-down TV
journalism.
“My fear of horns probably goes back to when I was a
kid,” he recalls. “I really overreacted to the tornado sirens
and the practice for nuclear war.”
Casey says horns blowing are common in end-of-the-
world stories from literature. “It seems like right now the
loudest, most obnoxious people get the most attention,” he
says. “That seems to be the age that we’re living in.”
But Descent isn’t all darkness. In fact, Casey calls him-
self a “struggling optimist,” admitting to me he doesn’t re-
ally know whether Protomartyr sends a particular message
about the state of the world. If the band does, he says, “It
might be pretty garbled.”
But on album track “The Chuckler” Casey muses: “I guess
I’ll keep on chuckling / ’til there’s no more breath in my lungs.”
Protomartyr plays with Hurry Up and Palehound 10 pm Saturday, Oct. 14,
at Hi-Fi Music Hall Lounge; $12 advance, $15 door.
eugeneweekly.com • October 12, 2017
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