Album Review: Protomartyr - Ultimate Success Today

Protomartyr frontman Joe Casey must read quite a lot. On the band’s 2014 track “Maidenhead” he retold a dark tale from a 1941 novel by British author and playwright Patrick Hamilton called Hangover Square. The book’s narrative follows a crippling alcoholic with an identity disorder whose problems escalate when his dissociative states – or “dead moods” – become violent. As a nice cherry on top, Hamilton works in themes of fascism, class, and pre-war England. It wasn’t just the characters suffering, it was an entire society. Sound familiar?

It’s not dissimilar from Casey’s take on the tale. Protomartyr’s “Maidenhead” represents a release from the dregs of the underclass, but the hope provided turns out to be false. Class and greed also underscore Casey’s prose throughout the band’s discography, bubbling just between the surface of angry guitars and odd rhythms. There are few modern bands that depict social instability amidst art as well as Protomartyr.

After signing to Domino, releasing their impactful 2017 album Relatives In Descent and re-issuing their debut All Passion No Technique, the band had some looking back to do. A new LP is always a daunting venture, and the ill feelings Casey had during the writing process almost turned against him. “This panic was freeing in a way. It allowed me to see our fifth album as a possible valediction of some confusingly loud five-act play,” said Casey about the writing of Ultimate Success Today. Although panic and socioeconomic struggle are still ever-present in Protomartyr’s music, this album proves to be their most concise yet.

Lead single “Processed By The Boys” is a fantastic return. Soaked in propulsion and dread, the song imagines a handful of apocalyptic scenarios. “When the ending comes, is it gonna run at us like a wild-eyed animal?” Casey questions at the outset. There’s so much macabre quality to the lyric, it kind of sticks out in the band’s catalogue, which is saying something. It’s worth watching the video accompaniment with its bizarre humor and tackiness: a small crowd enjoys a karaoke version of the song while trying to ignore a petty fight going on in the same room. Casey’s hilariously-cast doppelgänger is professional and unfazed despite the violence going on in his crowd.

While the fight itself is a rather simple take on a Brazilian meme video that the band became infatuated with while writing, there’s poetry under the surface. The show goes on, but people can’t help but be distracted by the fight happening just a few feet away. This is the same way that, throughout the record, Protomartyr discuss the state of the world without beating the listener over the head with the themes – indeed, the pounding ache we all feel is easily tackled by the instrumentals alone.

So yeah, Protomartyr are a politically-charged punk band, but damn did guitarist Greg Ahee ever nail it with this record. Opener “Day Without End” has an incredible build to it; where previous album openers gave the listener a nice release in the chorus, this track has no intention of being so accommodating. We’re held over the edge of a cliff as Ahee’s tones become more and more lamenting and loud, while free jazz saxophones round things out perfectly, like a swirling collection of neurons trying to operate under extreme duress and anxiety. Keeping with its title, “Day Without End” doesn’t end so much as suddenly stop.

Another Ahee highlight is “June 21”, where his guitar takes a reprieve from its usual distorted cries to work in more of an angular early-80s punk aesthetic. Half Waif mainbrain Nandi Rose kicks off the vocals and does a fabulous impression of Casey’s cadence, before he retakes the helm. The riffs are disorienting and awkward, perfectly matching his mumbling gait as he tells a bleaker summertime story than a breakup album. “Don’t go to the BP after dark,” he bemoans about a lonely corner of Detroit where even his enemies aren’t keeping him company.

“Michigan Hammers” opens up the second half of Ultimate Success Today with gusto, and it’s perhaps the finest showcase of the band’s rhythm section to date. Scott Davidson’s basslines are bleating and cruel, never warning the listener before climbing up the neck to Carlos D levels of treble, while Alex Leonard on drums smartly lets Ahee and the horn section hold the foreground of the song. “What’s been torn down can be rebuilt / What has been rebuilt can be destroyed,” Casey cries from the end of the bar (after observing that only some of the other drinkers are on pills). The choppy editing of explosions, police brutality, corporate success, and a hammer crashing through glass in the video are another no-frills addition to the narrative.

“Tranquilizer” and “Modern Business Hymns” are exhaustingly aggressive at this juncture, but there’s more poignant prose to hold things together: “Eating dirt and growth from built-up respirators / While the rich sup on zebra mussels broiled in plankton.” We’ve heard Casey take much-needed digs at the super-wealthy dozens of times before, but this is 2020 and the band will express anger where it’s due.

Protomartyr bed down the tensions incredibly well with closing track “Worm In Heaven” – but gosh is it ever a drag to get through. Like revisiting his feelings around All Passion No Technique, Casey seems well aware that any moment could be the band’s last, and takes the opportunity to say goodbye. Although the song is mired in a retrospective of a frightened existence, he has bittersweet things to say to those he’ll leave behind: “Be as needed as the nail / As neat as the pin… I wish you well, I do.” This farewell works best on a thematic level, and solidifies his idea of Ultimate Success Today being akin to the denouement of a five-act play.

Ultimate Success Today is the closest the band have come to a perfect front-to-back experience. Even if your ears may feel they need a break from the towering walls of instrumentation, the lyrics and style will keep you coming back; spend some time with the lyric sheet and you’ll continue to ponder and explore the literature that inspired Casey. Almost any song here would fit well with Brothers Karamazov  (Dostoevsky’s Dmitri fits many of Casey’s depictions to a tee) or 1984 as a companion. Also, given that they’re natives to Detroit, there is a sense that the band feel a duty to talk about how recent years have affected their community. It’s a cautionary tale we can all learn from.

On Ultimate Success Today, Protomartyr have made essential jams for a genre that’s been passed around dozens of times over. It’s nice to know that, five albums deep, the band haven’t lost any ferocity, and that they continue to be a mouthpiece for so many feelings we all share.

Album Review: LA Priest - GENE

No one is more tired of hearing this tale than Sam Eastgate, but damn, Fantasy Black Channel was one hell of a record. Eastgate’s now defunct Late of the Pier took elements from dance punk and concocted an ecstatic mixture of his mind’s inner-workings. After its release in 2008, we couldn’t wait to see what the band were going to throw at us next.

Eastgate’s LA Priest project is so far removed from this level of bombast, it’s difficult to remember that it’s the same person. We were all disappointed when that second Late of the Pier album never came, but after his 2015 debut as LA Priest, Inji, all was forgiven.

Eastgate was eager to mature his sound, and we were all willing to wait for it. Sadly, GENE fails to set the hook beyond its general concepts. Save for a couple of stinkers, the songs on the album are fine. There’s patient care to each soundscape; Eastgate even created his own instrument, the titular GENE, to compose the album.

Staying in a consistent groove for the length of “Beginning” is a testament to Eastgate’s growth as a songwriter. It’s an excellent way to open the album, like you’ve stepped outside your house for the first time in the day to realize there’s a Mary Poppins whimsicality to the world. Instead of singing penguins and birds however, there’s a host of razor-tight guitar chords and staccato arpeggios underneath a buoyant vocal line. The stage seems set for an expansion on the unpredictability of Fantasy Black Channel and Inji.

Next is “Rubber Sky” which also never strays from its base elements; there’s a distinct shift in the sound coming from the GENE in the track’s second half, but the pulse on the drums remains stubbornly in place. By the third track, we should be stepping away from these tired ‘boom-clap’ drum forms, and what we get is “What Moves”, which is one of Eastgate’s most fun vocal melodies ever; trace any part of your body to its arrangement and you’ll certainly end up in a pleasant dance. It’s a great song, but it doesn’t sequence well with what comes before.

At this point GENE is gasping for more pep and variety; instead we get “Peace Lily” which is more of a coda to “What Moves” than a complete song. There’s a Bibio-inspired lilt to the guitar which is quite pleasant when taken by itself; taken within context of the record, however, it feels like an afterthought. The following “Open My Eyes” has an enchanting melody and there’s nothing to complain about on its own, but at this point, five tracks in, GENE hasn’t made a single dynamic shift.

“Sudden Thing”, “Monochrome”, and “Black Smoke” also do little to bring lift-off to this project, but each boasts an excellent finale. “Sudden Thing” ends with a moment of relative silence, with legato strums and minimalist drums, which would be soothing if it were on a different album. The other two songs both have a very energetic ending to them, but the decision to place the fabulous drum break at the end of “Black Smoke” instead of the beginning is beyond this writer. It almost feels like Eastgate is purposefully hiding GENE’s more engaging elements deep within its tracks; the blueprints are laid out, but the construction has no flash.

After multiple listens, the frustration begins piling on. Perhaps a new level of collaboration would have given LA Priest the adrenaline shot it needs. Longtime producer and Phantasy Records mainbrain Erol Alkan once again worked with Eastgate on the album, and their chemistry on individual songs is clear, but when challenged with creating an album experience, maturation has given way to lethargy. Even the poetry is flat – trading the immediacy of Eastgate’s ruminations on suicide and sex and replacing them with lyrics that are greyly unspecific. The fact that “Kissing of the Weeds” exists at all is a goof, and the milquetoast lyrics aren’t helping.

Despite the utter boredom of GENE, Eastgate is no stranger to a hook or a pleasant song, but what made Inji and Late of the Pier work so well was his ability to mix those skills with songs that were genuinely fun to hear. Conversely, getting through GENE is a total chore. We end with “Ain’t No Love Affair”, which closes the album experience on two minutes of trippy ambience and arrhythmia. This kind of winding down would be more welcome at the end of an exciting journey, and it ends up being yet another song that might have prospered in a different context.

None of this is evidence that Eastgate is over the hill or talentless. To the contrary, the ability to restrain your songs from blasting off into a massive synth solo is difficult to do when you have an instrument as crafty as the GENE, which has effectively created its own genre. Eastgate’s steadfastness is praiseworthy, but it hardly makes for an engaging album experience. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait another five years to hear this sound get the expansion it deserves.

Album Review: Other Lives - For Their Love

A whole host of instruments familiar and unfamiliar can be found throughout Other Lives‘ four albums. Picking apart these complexities is one of the best parts about being a fan: realizing how sparse the drums are, discovering ghostly background vocals, and connecting Jesse Tabish’s lyrics to the band’s arrangements, to name a few highlights. This is still true, nine years after their breakout album Tamer Animals, which landed them not only a cultish following but a coveted spot opening for Radiohead. 2015’s Rituals was a left hook from the band, who wasted zero time making their “electronic record” while continuing to strategically bury compelling sounds underneath a pysch-folk haze.

Five years later, we have a new Other Lives record. Recorded on their own terms in an A-frame house (as depicted on the album cover) in Oregon’s Cooper Mountain Region, For Their Love is definitely the same band as before, but almost disappointingly so. Gone are much of the fun mysteries behind the arrangements of your average Other Lives tune. Each of the 10 tightly-wound tracks lays its hand out for all to see. “We wanted 10 songs that held up by themselves,” explained Tabish about the process.

Indeed, For Their Love showcases a much more collaborative and balanced Other Lives, and the mix makes the songs more immediate. Though this might disappoint fans who were eager to dig deep into this record, it isn’t always bad. Those spectre-like vocals that were buried so deep on Tamer Animals cuts are now the focal point, accentuating the most poignant words. “Ah you really fucked me up this time,” sings Tabish with his wife Kim, now a fixture in the band, on standout “Cops”. As ever, it’s not what Tabish sings, but how he sings it.

There’s an impressionism to lines like “It’s a lost day man, for the newborn seeker” on “Lost Day”, but the drama remains evident. Furthermore, there’s drama everywhere on For Their Love. “Hey Hey I” explodes with one of the band’s most consistent drum grooves layered atop a Tame Impala-inspired piano syncopation: “Hey man, something don’t seem right / they only come at night!” sings an ecstatic chorus at the song’s peak. Conversely, “We Wait” is incredibly somber, as Tabish recounts the horror of his best friend’s murder at 17 years old. “It’s been haunting me for the last decade,” Tabish admits. “It’s part of my larger narrative of dealing with troubling stuff in my life.”

With this haunting tale in mind, you wonder what other “trouble” is being addressed throughout For Their Love. Few songwriters have been able to stray away from addressing “these troubling times,” but Tabish often gets by through penning more vague poetry. It works to the band’s favor, but they struggle to make the full album experience stick, which is most apparent on For Their Love.

This is more a collection of songs than an album. Each individual song is a painting, but the landscape barely shrinks even on the album’s softer moments. “Dead Language” is a welcome reprieve from the bombast of the singles, but still can’t help filling out the EQ spectrum by its end. Closer “Sideways” is perhaps the best song here, but this is largely due to the fact that it stays slow and peaceful throughout.

Take any one moment of For Their Love and you’ll find an engaging piece of pop rock, but, where previous albums blended freak folk with Joey Waronker’s bizarre production, For Their Love falls too neatly into that now dreaded “indie” category. This is unfair for a band with this much vision.

Other Lives could be deemed a more down-to-earth version of Fleet Foxes, but that’s not fair either. That being said, it’s hard to stand out when each song on your new record has the same woodsy atmosphere. Sure, having a distinct identifier of your sound is a good thing, but mixing it up over the course of 10 songs is essential. The fact that the band engineered and produced For Their Love on their own is consistently made clear. As much as one should praise the singular voice in a piece of art, Other Lives could’ve used an outside ear or two.

Still, there are no bad songs here. Some fans might even be thrilled with the more consistent approach. For Their Love often feels like the more meticulously produced sibling to Tamer Animals, both to its credit and discredit. There’s not a lot of staying power on this record, but at least it’s well done. “We really set out to make a band record,” said Tabish of the process. Other Lives have accomplished just that.

Album Review: Ian Chang - Belonging

At what point does a musician decide to take that leap into a solo career? It’s a question most famously faced by jazzers and session musicians, and is as old as popular music itself. Electronic artists have one of the richer histories of sharing collaborators before that solo album finally drops. Ian Chang’s career is a modern example of the collaborating shapeshifter – collaborative in the sense that his list of credits is immense (aside from his role in Son Lux, he has worked with the likes of Moses Sumney and Matthew Dear, to name a couple) and shapeshifting in the sense that his style can be applied to a host of pop and electronic styles.

Six instrumentals and three vocal features make up Belonging, but only the former works consistently in Chang’s favor. At his core, Chang is an electronic percussionist, melding dizzying beats with a neoclassical bent. Dig into the world of academic, computer-based composition and you’ll find many similar sounds. His debut, Belonging attempts to provide a bridge between experimental and pop music sensibilities, but suffers greatly by trying to have it both ways.

“Drunken Fist” is the best song here. A boiler room hiss provokes a host of creeping percussion and erhu samples that could make their way into a horror film, but the overall creativity of the song trumps the frightening atmosphere. “Bird’s Tongue” is another gem, using Hanna Benn’s voice as an instrument instead of a focal point – a trick that the other collaborations on the record could have used to a great end.

The problem with the best songs on Belonging is their brevity. “Swarm” is hardly a track at all, clocking in at under one minute despite featuring one of the album’s best performances, as a treated bongo tickles the eardrums with a Zach Hill-inspired performance. But why is it so short? Stack some of the rest of the album’s beat drops or flashes on top and you’d have something really special.

Instead the song disappears to usher in “Audacious”, which features Blonde Redhead’s KAZU and suffers from poor sequencing. KAZU’s hook is one of the only memorable melodies on the record, but it almost immediately gives way to a beat break that chops the track’s elements into a skittering mess. A vocalized version of the hook then carries the song to its unceremonious end. Many of the other tracks here suffer the same fate. All the puzzle pieces are there for great songs, but the final arrangement is obtuse and incomplete. To wit, the album is barely thirty minutes long despite being packed to the brim with samples and techniques.

“Comfort Me” is even worse, adding a horrid lyric to the pile of problems: “Big lights and small minds / Yeah, you know what I mean / It’s complicated,” sings Kiah Victoria. Why would we know what the lyrics mean if it’s also complicated? The answer probably lies in the record’s title; Chang and company are trying to belong, but feel stuck between their styles, never quite giving in to one cohesive sound.

There is a beauty in attempting to belong to a community of artists, and Chang’s catalogue is evidence that his skills are in high demand. But, the question of whether or not he should go solo still stands. Chang’s production style fits well within an established genre of Brainfeeder-adjacent jazztronica, but is not as rewarding. Belonging is a neat and meticulous record that begs to be lengthened in the solo compositions, but frustrates and falters in its collaborations.