You can't just stay a likable indie band forever. At some point you have to move on, Detroit band Protomartyr thought. The strength of their best work, such as breakthrough album
Relatives In Descent (2017) lay in their raw and elemental mix of post-punk and Detroit rock, as a backdrop for Joe Casey's musing chatty vocals. A dark and powerful but also sympathetic sound, as if the four unremarkable
… members themselves weren't quite sure how they had outgrown the rehearsal room and suddenly found themselves at Lowlands (2018). That changed with Formal Growth In The Desert. For the recordings, the group headed to a studio in Texas, where they worked on a grander and more melodramatic sound. On their sixth album, Protomartyr sounds self-conscious and gothic, with solid guitar walls and a dark and menacing orating Casey. In the purging closing track Rain Garden, he invokes his beloved over and over again, as if the singer wants to shake off all the preceding darkness. (MR)more
