Protomartyr Is Your Favourite Band’s Favourite Band
Images by Elena Saviano
Protomartyr doesn’t have a ‘good’ album; they’re all good, they’re all strong and weak where they should be, and they’re all someone’s favourite.
As Joe Casey, the lead singer and lyricist would say about their catalog in this interview which took place on the upper balcony of the Bowery Ballroom in New York City just hours before they’d grace the stage for a sold out show, ‘there aren’t any stinkers in there’, and he’s right.
While Protomartyr have turned out a focused and developed body of work - six albums including their most recent and perhaps most acclaimed, Formal Growth In The Desert - they haven’t broken into a mainstream market. However, what they have done is created intricate and tactile guitar music, while influencing a generation of contemporary post-punk favorites such as Idles, Catcher, and Fontaine’s DC, and helped form the sonic landscape of guitar music in the 2010s and 2020s in ways that they may be too humble to consider.
There is something to the songwriting, the precision in their usage and absence of words or chords or both. They do what many bands of the new post-punk era have tried and continue to try: turning innocuity into severity. Protomartyr is able to feel the abstract, applying all of the seriousness and weight of a song’s would-be emotional centerpiece - the chorus - to a phrase overheard once in a bar, and it being crushing.
As the abstract subject matter of their music has been well and rightfully picked over by every music journalist from every blog to magazine for twelve years, we thought it would be more interesting to ask Joe Casey how he feels about it all.
How’s it going? How’s the new album? The tour?
So far so good. Just started the tour two days ago. The album came out and people seem to like it and those who don’t like it, fuck um.
People are very enthusiastic about the album Now that you’re into your second decade of being a band and having put out a significant body of work, do you feel a sense of accomplishment?
It’s nice to hear that there isn’t a stinker in there because you can look back and think that we’ve created chapters in a story. I like that fans of Protomartyr each have a favorite record - there is no one record that’s the stand out. Most bands don’t last five years let alone twelve years, so I’m grateful. Especially coming off of the pandemic, we are really enjoying being in a band. We got very used to putting out an album and touring and over and over, so when that was taken away, that put things in perspective.
In the way that you said throughout your body of work, there is no singular strongest album. Do you feel any pressure to maintain that certain level of quality?
You never say, ‘I don’t want to fuck this up’, but the band as a whole, we are kind of hard on ourselves so a lot of stuff gets thrown away. I think we have a pretty good bullshit detector where we know what will make a good Protomartyr song. I say that now but then the next record could have a bunch of stinkers on it.
In this span of time, how do you think that your editing process has changed?
Well, I now realize that I actually have to sing this stuff. When we first started, we were considered a punk band and played small venues with really bad sound and nobody could hear what I was saying. I didn’t put much thought into being a singer. Unfortunately, now, as my voice gets rougher and rougher, we are playing in larger venues where people can really hear a pin drop and I have to think about singing these words. Because of that, we’ve gotten more interested in melody, whereas in the past, I probably, if anything, put too many lyrics into a song. Maybe someday I’ll go back to being super wordy. When you play live, you realize which songs are hard to sing. We are playing a song tonight called Wheel of Fortune that has way too many words.
When you go into a writers room, you look at things more sustainably? Is there anything that’s difficult but great so you just deal with the difficulty?
The music comes first, and then I’ll write out notes of whatever I’ve been thinking about over the years, and when you get started on actual lyrics - I’m going to sound very pretentious - but when you get started on lyrics, you want to make sure that you write music that is timeless. You don’t want it to be immediately dated. I didn’t write a song about fidget spinners. You always try to shoot for some universal, stand the test of time type of stuff. Your hope is that a song can maintain it’s interest long after its been written.
I’ve been listening to you for a long time, and a lot of the bands I see today draw an influence from you. How are you feeling about your place as an influence?
Well, it’s nice to hear. It’s better when the band sounds good. If the band was influenced by us and they suck, it’s kind of a bummer. Influence is a funny thing in a band because you try not to take direct influence from anything, so maybe they’re just inspired by but not lifting directly from us. There’s a thing that happens with big heavy hitters where you hear them and someone’s like, ‘if you like that big band, you might like this obscure band that no one remembers anymore,’ and I’m worried that we might be that.
You have an aversion to being on that list?
I mean I’d rather make money. We didn’t set out to make money or to necessarily appeal to anybody, so this has turned out great, but you do, as a band, sometimes hope to write a song that’s played at sporting events or something.
Like a Mazda commercial?
No, not a commercial. I say that, but we’ve never been asked, so who knows. The White Stripes are an example, who are also from Detroit. Seven Nation Army made them very wealthy and a big part of that is that it’s played at massive sporting events. They didn’t sit down and write it with that intention, and no one can. You just kind of hope, sometimes.
A lot of your songwriting themes are very abstract, but a lot of it is to do with time, capitalism, money - do you ever find yourself writing around those things? Like, ‘this is too much of a pop song, we can’t do it.’
No, I know that Greg will edit himself if he thinks that something is too on the nose or something like that. I’m not worried about it. I also understand why bands become more mild with age, the tempos slow, the lyrics become more simplistic. I think that if anything ,we’d have to do a fluke sell out. I don’t think we could plan on it. My voice is not for everybody, but maybe there’s a commercial with a cartoon animal or something.
What did you set out to do with this record, and do you think you did it? Do you think that your goals have changed from record to record?
The thing about this record is that this is our sixth record. We are no logner the hot new thing. People can compare it to our history, and everytime a fan hears a song, they do that mental thing where they’re like, ‘this is their sixth worst song, this one is their tenth best song.’ Everyone does it, I do it. When you’re making music, you really have to try to entertain yourself because you’re never going to please everyone. I don’t know what a particular fan wants out of a Protomarty record, but I know what I want, so that’s all I can do.
Do you think that looking back on this history, you’ve achieved what you wanted to?
Yeah, because we always set small goals. Let’s put out a 7”, let’s tour outside of Detroit, let’s make a record. Each little goal is achieved, then you work your way up. We still have some goals that we haven’t fulfilled yet, and they’re not about winning a Grammy, they’re about playing in Japan, or Mexico City. The small stuff keeps you going.
For a small band starting out in the midwest, what advice would you offer them?
Don’t be in a band. Nah, I think, just set your goals small. If there’s not a local scene, make your own. In Detroit, there are a lot of bands and young kids doing their own thing, and I don’t know what’s going on anymore because I’m not invited to those cool houses anymore, but they still happen, and that’s good to see. Find like minded people and make a band. Don’t worry about getting tons of likes online or your aesthetic, just make music and then figure out what it is.
