In hospitable hues of almond and blue, Protomartyr’s new Hotel Usona website advertises the amenities at a dystopian resort: mirror-covered walls to further self-regard, A.I. systems to replace the need to think, a penthouse with windows thick enough to block out the moans of the lower class. “Discover which one of our speciality suites offers you the kind of liberty you have always been craving or have grown accustomed to from birth,” it reads. The complete rendering—including reservations, TV guide, and guestbook—extends the perverse tone of their seventh album, where the typically tense post-punk band loosens up its sound with forlorn horns, loungey percussion, and a faux lack of urgency.
Protomartyr vocalist Joe Casey has long joked that he wants to make a happy record, but it’s hard to smile when his blood is boiling watching politicians cower and ICE round up immigrants. Over their 16-year existence as a band, Protomartyr—Casey, drummer Alex Leonard, bassist Scott Davidson, and multi-instrumentalist and co-producer Greg Ahee—have sought to pierce American hypocrisy and greed with their stony cynicism. Each song on Hotel Usona dresses up a problem in human attire and welcomes it as a guest: “Feed the Sewer” takes place in “the crypto ballroom,” attacking a society beholden to fearmongering content and its bottomless appetite for “water, electricity.” “Third Country”—a term associated with a controversial Trump administration deportation policy—bemoans those desensitized to ongoing violence and American profiteering, picturing a beachside resort where “compassion leaks out.”
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From the concierge desk, Casey delivers each lyric about the slow paralysis and pervasive selfishness of modern life as calmly as if he were reading an announcement. No wonder that’s scarier: The only thing worse than being warned of what’s ahead is being informed as a matter of fact. Protomartyr began doing so in earnest on 2023’s Formal Growth in the Desert, where Casey occasionally softened his delivery and Leonard’s syncopated, cross-stick drumming lightened the band’s typical rhythmic pressure. On Hotel Usona, these steadying breaths take proper effect. After years of drawing Mark E. Smith comparisons for his deadpan delivery and its intimidation factor, Casey’s tense line reads sound a little more relaxed now. If pessimism still chews at his brain, he sounds assured in his ability to survive it along the long road toward truly radical change.
