
PROTOMARTYR
Formal Growth In The Desert (Domino)
“Welcome to the haunted earth…” One wondered how everyone’s favourite Detroitian postpunk chroniclers of human failings, Protomartyr, would emerge from the pandemic era, and the first line from opening song Make Way lets you know that, thankfully, they still have at least one foot in the camp marked “embittered”. Despite the song’s subtle use of lap steel, this is no sudden excursion into country and western. Likewise, the synths on For Tomorrow aren’t indicative of a lurch towards electronica, just further evidence of the band’s continuing evolution.
Recorded in the Texas desert, Formal Growth In The Desert is an album that is both haunted by loss and hopeful for the future. Both Graft Vs Host and The Author revisit the subject of singer Joe Casey’s mother’s passing, a loss he reflects on as a chance to move on and be happy himself (“find happiness in a cloudless sky”) and an instruction to others to do the same (“so I figure while you live, kiss the ones that love you”). Wise words for the end times from Protomartyr.
words PAUL JENKINS
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