Music Review: Protomartyr, The Agent Intellect

By Jeffery X Martin

One of the glorious things about living in a college town is getting to listen to college radio. Flexible playlists, fresh new music, and DJs who haven’t quite learned to read out loud are only a few of the entertainment benefits. In fact, the first time I heard Protomartyr was on our local college station (WUTK – Volunteer Radio, baby). I thought the announcer said the name of the band was “Robo-Margaret.” I searched for that non-existent band for two days!

I figured it out, eventually, and it’s a good thing I did, because Protomartyr’s third album, The Agent Intellect, is a tremendous way to start winding this year down.

Based in Detroit, Protomartyr’s sound is a throwback to the mid-Eighties underground scene. Greg Ahee’s guitar work has a giant, nasty tone that recalls Hüsker Dü’s early work on the SST label. The rhythm section of Alex Leonard and Scott Davidson back Ahee up valiantly. A wall of sound? Maybe, but it’s a wall with holes in it. The silence is as important as the fury in Protomartyr’s music. Those silences are where Joe Casey’s vocals come sliding through.

Casey isn’t a screamer. He’s really not much of a singer. But his vocal presence is arresting as he intensely mumbles his way through the songs. The airy production is a fascinating contrast of those tones, the driving music and the shoegaze vocals, with room for everything. Nothing is buried in the mix.

Nothing… except perhaps hope.

Much has been made of the fact that Casey lost his father before recording this album, and his mother is suffering from early onset dementia. These life events certainly don’t make for happy lyrics, and Casey’s cynicism takes center stage. The single, “Dope Cloud,” illustrates this perfectly. Drawing harsh comparisons between drug abuse and fervent religious belief, Casey sends out lines like, “You dedicated your life to prayer / You suffered in silence there / That’s not gonna save you, man.” That’s some bleak shit, children, and Joe Casey is one of those guys with a definitive voice of experience, like Tom Waits without the hookers.

The Agent Intellect is not just a good album. It’s a smart one. And you can play the game of naming Protomartyr’s influences, which they don’t bother trying to hide. My current comparison, if you need that, is that Protomartyr is The Hüsker and Mary Jawbreaker Division. But when all of that is said and done, you’re left with something beyond entertainment. This is part of a map, the journey to The Truth According to Joe Casey. He might enunciate like a first-year college radio DJ, but the things he’s saying deserve consideration and repeated listening.

The Agent Intellect was released by Hardly Art on October 9.