Protomartyr Transmit from the Rubble of the Midwest
Photo credit: Angel Ceballos
There was a time when Protomartyr, arguably against their own wishes, seemed to embody the spirit of Detroit. Over the course of their first few records, they wrote seemingly specific and highly eloquent, teeth-gnashing laments to regular people stuck in a bankrupt city, haunted by the ghost of the automotive industry, a perennial economic slide, and all the well-placed and misdirected ugliness that followed. With time however, that limited view of the band has been rectified. Detroit has fully emerged as a precursory emblem of a continued global descent, and Protomartyr’s ambit has grown to encompass a world-wide unease.
Through it all, they remain the most enduring band of this umpteenth wave of post-punk revival. A huge part of why the band were able to peel away from the scene they helped resurrect has been their subtle yet steady evolving. As quick as they crashed onto the scene as yet another scrappy quartet paying dues to Joy Division and The Fall, they veered away into exploring texture and atmospherics on their own terms, making a string of arresting albums that gradually grew in scope – embracing confrontation, while leaving more and more room for something decidedly more beautiful.
Unlike many of their peers, they don’t rely on massively overdriven bass, preferring to write air-tight songs cloaked in paranoia and quotidian anxiety. And though the band’s singer, Joe Casey’s, early days also saw him ape aspects of Mark E. Smith, by now, he has forged a full-fledged persona of his own - a modernist barfly with a heart of gold, patron saint of the working schlub, a prophet of doom in a creased suit.
In the run-up to their headlining two-day slot of Taverne Tour, playing their excellent 2015 effort, The Agent Intellect, in its entirety, Reverie sat down with Casey to try and pick at the mind of a man who has been so thoroughly and poetically chronicling America’s decline in the 21st century.
REVERIE: First things first, is there a new album in the works?
I’ll leave our activities on that front behind a veil of secrecy for the time being. No use counting chickens before they’re hatched.
Has the ten-year age gap between you and the rest of you been rectified by time, now that you’re in your second decade of operation?
The only benefit of me being older was they didn’t have to deal with me as a preening, look-at-me frontman in my 20’s. I brought a humbled, defeated old husk in his mid-30’s instead. For me, the joy of being ten years older is I can make them feel like weaklings if they complain about the rigors of touring. I have a decade’s head start on the bodily decrepitude - hearing loss, organ bloat, etc.
REVERIE: Do you still go to Kinko’s (FedEx) to collage the band’s art, or have you ushered yourself into the age of photoshop?
No photoshop, no. Sadly, FedEx Office have universally replaced their multifunctional, useable copiers with these bare-bones pieces of shit they are trying to foist on their customers. No artistic use, just “AI-assisted” dog-shit. FedEx Office should be utterly ashamed of the obvious cost-cutting measure. It really has devastated mine and others’ artistic output. I’m kinda at a loss. It’s like being a painter and waking up to a world without pigment. It might seem like hyperbole, but I really don’t know what to do… I’m too poor to buy a functional copier machine.
REVERIE: You’ve said before that some of your songs have “stupid” meaning behind them. Would you give us a scoop and reveal just one of them and the meaning behind it?
You’ll have to jog my memory on when I said the songs have stupid meanings. Sometimes the inspiration can be seemingly trivial, I suppose - some line from an old TV show, or the overheard rantings of a local drunk. Maybe that’s what I meant? Some songs are too twilight-born between consciousness and happenstance to be given real meanings. And over-explaining things can take the fun out of it, I think.
REVERIE: On Relatives in Descent, you sang about false prophets and ‘vile trumpets.’ How does a second, more emboldened Trump term feel on the ground in Michigan? Is ICE’s presence as violently felt?
It doesn’t feel good. It won’t feel good again until ICE is abolished. I can guarantee that.
REVERIE: You’ve previously plumbed the Anatomy of Melancholy for some lyrical themes. What’s your favourite odd disease or affliction that you’ve read about?
AI Psychosis feels like one of those burgeoning afflictions that will either be a marker of a time period like arsenic poisonings in the 1850’s through commonly used dyes, or a new class of brain-damaged people that will just be part of life. Either way, I don’t have a favorite disease. I’m not a fucking Addams Family member.
REVERIE: Are you planning a tour/collab with Tyvek (fellow iconic Detroit garage punk band) anytime soon?
Planning anything with Tyvek would be like trying to nail a cloud to the wall. Tyvek operates in its own space and time, separate from the world most of us inhabit. That said, if they ever wanted me to add really, really turned-down in the mix backing vocals again I couldn’t say no. As for touring, I think touring with Protomartyr is probably beneath them.
REVERIE: Who is your favourite historical protomartyr?
Well, we have the Selfridge Air National Guard Base here in Michigan, which is basically just a military airport. And it’s named after the first guy to die in a plane crash. So, I guess he’d be the Protomartyr of the Air. Funny thing is, he was one of the first passengers too. So first passenger, first fatality. The pilot was Orville Wright, which is something they don’t front load in the Wright Brothers story…they killed a guy. Also, it’s a fairly morbid name for an airport.
REVERIE: Do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
No. I haven’t read too many books this past year. Mostly baby books. Any other books were probably fodder for the next album which is safely behind that secret veil I was talking about.
Protomartyr are headlining Taverne Tour at Le Belmont, Thursday Feb 12th and Friday Feb 13th!!
