Those are the first lines from “Elimination Dances,” the third track on Protomartyr’s 2023 LP “Formal Growth in the Desert.” The record, like its titular Maxfield Parrish painting, has a thematic home in Arizona.
“I was visiting my girlfriend at the time, now my wife,” said Joe Casey, frontman of the Detroit post-punk outfit. “She’s from Phoenix, and we’d gone out to Sedona. Just being out there in the desert and seeing the giant rock formations, you start to feel very insignificant in the world, at least for a Midwest boy, with your worries and things compared to these million-year-old rock formations that will be here long after you’re gone.”
Protomartyr will return to Arizona on Wednesday, June 28, at 191 Toole, where they will show fans all of the growth they’ve seen through the creative desert that has been the past years.
“Coming out of COVID, we didn’t know if we were going to be a band anymore. It was a period that, when it started, they didn’t know when concerts were going to come back. Some people thought it would never come back.
“So, us getting back as a band, we actually had to really want it. We weren’t very creative in that period when everything was locked down, so it took us a while to learn how to be a band again. And when I was writing lyrics for the music, I wanted to talk about that period of time, but also what was happening in my life, falling in love and all that.”
The band has certainly evolved since 2020’s “Ultimate Success Today.” The biggest change, according to Casey, was the band’s decision for guitarist Greg Ahee to co-produce the record.
“He’s always been the one who’s kind of the engine room of the song,” Casey said. “He comes up with the ideas a lot of the time, musically.
“We have this great producer, Jake Aron, and we were like, ‘Why don’t you guys work together, you usually have the best ideas, or you communicate what the band wants.’ Instead of having the whole band talk to a producer, it’s good to just have one voice. And Greg’s got a lot of great ideas.”
Ahee is responsible for some of the record’s biggest sonic innovations, namely, the introduction of pedal steel guitar to the band’s eclectic repertoire. Throughout the album, the pedal steel’s resounding, weepy presence adds an often-disquieting Western backdrop to Protomartyr’s distinct moody sound (listen to “Polacrilex kid”).
“We thought this might be a step forward or a different kind of sound than maybe you’d be used to if you followed Protomartyr.
“We always like to try to do some different things even if they’re minute or hard to explain to somebody, just to keep it interesting for ourselves. Maybe I’ll try to write a song with fewer words than I have before or try to sing in a different way.”
It’s all about experimentation for Casey, who, growing up in the ’80s, would steal his brothers’ cassette tapes based on how obscure the covers were. It was through this judge-a-book-by-its-cover process that he found Public Image Ltd. and Wire, and a generation of other punk artists departing from the genre’s rigid guidelines.
“By the time I was in high school, punk had very strict rules,” Casey said. “Punk is this, pop punk is this, ska punk is this. It’s very codified, what is and isn’t something. Whereas post-punk is very amorphous and can be whatever you want it to be.
“I hope that when we get called post punk it’s because we’re trying to experiment with the form, not because I sing with a low voice, and we sound like Joy Division sometimes.”
Casey refuses to be put in a box. Though he points to punk legends of yore (Shane MacGowan of The Pogues, Mark E. Smith of The Fall) as influences, his esoteric and deeply figurative style of songwriting is inspired by everything from 20th century literature to daytime television.
“I read a bunch of books,” Casey said. “I have two older brothers, and they definitely read way more books than I did. But as the younger brother, I was like, ‘I’m going to read as many books as my brothers.’ So, I tried to keep up, and then I ended up going to college for English.
“I take from what I’ve read, but I also take lyrics from what I watch on TV, and that can be an infomercial, or a game show. I just try to take things from wherever I get it. That’s the best way to do it, to take stuff from both high and low culture and mix them up. Because that’s what you consume on a daily basis.”
But the songs themselves tend to be one of the frontman’s biggest muses, as he usually writes his lyrics after the rest of the band establishes a track’s instrumental foundation.
“I always kind of go off of the basic form of the song. And that helps me because it forms the writing, like how long a line is going to be or what I’m going to write about, because I’m being influenced by what the music is making me feel,” Casey said.
“It helps a lot. I don’t think I’m good at writing things freely without some sort of a guardrail. The song is the guardrail that allows me to be creative.”
Protomartyr’s cross-disciplinary influences shine out in its creative multimedia projects.
For “Formal Growth in the Desert,” the band released three music videos, each as inventive as the songs they accompany, along with the Marty Singer Telethon, a public access event which aired on Highland Park TV.
The telethon featured performances from “Formal Growth in the Desert,” appearances from an array of characters like Nikki the Nicotine, a cigarette who advertises the revolutionary “Nico-Crate,” and two charismatic hosts, Marty Singer and Sarah McMahon, who just can’t seem to remember the band’s name.
“That was our idea to try and do something different” Casey said. “We worked with all the people that directed the three videos, so it gave us the opportunity to work with our friends again. That’s always an aspect that we love, and I think that in the future we’re probably going to do more of it.
“Maybe we can direct something, because one thing we all agree on in the band is we all love movies. We always have ideas for things, and Greg wants to score movies. Filmmakers with a lot of money, please let Protomartyr write your score. We’d love to do it.”
Protomartyr w/Immortal Nightbody
WHEN: 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 28
WHERE: 191 Toole, 191 E. Toole Avenue, Tucson
COST: Tickets start at $18; 21 and older
INFO: 191toole.com, protomartyrband.com
