Protomartyr - Formal Growth In The Desert
I like what you did with the play-doh there.
SAlt to taste Then Throw It Away After You Ruin It With Too Much Salt
Welp! It is more than clear by now that 2024 will be MY year of goal fulfillment! 52 reviews? NAH! I forget to mention that I revised the goal to 1 a month but “12weak.com” was already taken and I don’t have porn redirection site money to buy the URL off some skeevy dude living in Florida, so here we are. Deal with it, ok? You still with me? Great. Today’s selection is from a band called “Protomartyr”. Ever heard of them?
Don’t lie, you and I are not cool enough to have known about them prior to this review and we both know it. Here we are though. I am about to raise your hipster band cred by at least .254% which should make your teenage nephew still think your lame when you try to talk to him but like… slightly less so. At least you will be able to know attempt to talk to him about 2023’s “Formal Growth in the Desert” by post-punk bank ProtoMartyr whom hail from KidRockia Michigan. Trust me, you are guaranteed at least 8 minutes of his dwindling attention span once you do.
Track By Track
Before I get into the tracks, this one was a little different for me to review mostly because it is a very “homogenous” album. By that I mean it has one (admittedly good) trick and it rides that vibe for the full album. When I do these I listen to the record once to get an initial idea of what it is all about then will put it on over the course of a couple days to see which songs stick with me and finally a last time as I am writing to comment on the individual tracks and what they do. That works out pretty well usually, but here there is not a lot of distinction between the tracks, a lot of them run together because they all feel like they were recorded in one shot. I am not saying this is a good or bad thing, it just makes it hard to really say a lot because my notes were mostly the same. Also, I discovered “Green Lung” while working on this one and contrasting those two sounds is kind of messing with my head…
Make Way
Look, I know it is a sin to say this but… I do not really give a rats ass about being able to strictly define the characteristics of style specific sub genres. So this band being “Post Punk” means about as much to me as if you told me they were a “Hardcore Goat Wave” band. I love me some punk music but this “PP” moniker means nothing to me. If I am going by this opening track, I would guess it means “Jeff Buckley but like… faster sometimes”. That description is guaranteed to not end with me receiving death threats in my inbox, I am sure of it.
Anyway, this is pretty cool. I feel cool listening to it at least. I think that is the vibe they are going for. If you dont immediately vibe with this track then brother, I have some bad news for you because we are going to be on this dower ass vibe train for the next 40 minutes or so. I like how it ends with “Make Way… For tomorrow…” followed by:
For Tomorrow
This one has some more life in it! We get a great driving beat and those classic alternative guitar vibes. I am starting to think “PP” is just another way of saying “Alternative but less boring” and also I just really like referring to “PP” over again because my brain thinks that is funny and your still reading this so you are probably giggling too you sad excuse for an adult. Good track!
Elimination Dances
This song is about being sad you don’t have a dog to lick your hand when you accidentally spill mayonnaise on yourself while eating a turkey sandwich and don’t have napkin. Thats a pretty relatable theme honestly. Makes me want to dance or eliminate dance or whatever everyone else is doing at Wendys that moment. I love the bass line on this one, its a solid three saucy nugs out of 8.
Fun In Hi Skool
“Remembuh Remembuh When Things Were GUUUD!”
That is some pretty classic punk rock warbling right there. I fucking hate this song, mostly because it is impossible to discern if it is supposed to be making of mockery of our hi skool experience or a commentary on current hi skool experiences. Either way, it reminds me that I am old and probably going to die from congestive heart failure before I hit 60 so I better spend these precious final 20 years doing something really rad like swapping out letters in well established words for kooler letters so my kids wont think I am lame and buy me a really cool casket one day. 1 saucy nug.
Let’s Tip The Creator
I thought “PP” was all about the music maaan… now you are telling me you want me to support your “PP” band on patreon and buy your outsider beer can art?
I kept listening to this one and trying to decipher the marble mouthed lyrics and ended up giving up and looking them up on genius.com because I once heard a hipster reference it on a youtube video. That video was explaining to my white middle-aged dad ass what exactly was going on between Kendrick Lamar and Drake and he did it so well that I “tipped” his video by “smashing” “dat” “bell” as he requested. So if genius.com is to be believed (which obviously, you cant just ‘buy’ genius) this song is some deep lore commentary on Elon Musk being a smelly dick weasel and Mark Zuckerburg being a meat sucking robosapian. I can get on board with the sentiments and all I just with I wouldn’t have had to consult a website I don’t understand to explain them to me. This one is alright, pretty much sounds like all the other ones… dower, detuned and desaturated. Seems to be the theme here.
Graft Vs Host
Your sad… I get it. Now I am sad.
3800 Tigers
FINALLY a song with some more interesting arrangements! I did really like this one, it breaks away from the muddy and nihilistic vibe of the first half of the album and hits you with a punch of energy, crashing drums and some solid screaming from the vocalist. Man I just know these lyrics are probably about something REALLY dark and heavy to elicit such a dramatic upturn in the energy and angst in this track…
checks genius.com again…
Baseball. It’s about the Detroit Fucking KidRockia Tigers.
God damn it “PP”… this is like finding out that The Stooges subliminally wrote songs about cake recipes.
Polacrilex Kid
This one is pretty good, probably my favorite on the album. Does that classic ‘Punk Rock’ singer thing where you sing each line of the song like you are stabbing the listener with your words directly into their ear while saying ‘fuck’ a lot because you’re an edgy punk, sorry you are an edgy “PP” band and that’s what you have to do so you can stay off the radio and make moms poop their pants when they find out that little Johnny wants to be a “Post PP” rocker when he gets older and the genre is one more generation removed from where it is now. 12 saucy nugs for this one.
Fulfillment Center
This song is about getting lost looking for the fulfillment center. I don’t know what a fulfillment center is but its probably some sort of Michigan thing. I am from Ohio and as such was raised to believe that our neighbors to the North are bad people who worship weasels and drink the blood of sports kids as a means to stay immortal. Also, they can drive like, WAY faster up there. Probably to facilitate more bodies to feast upon. Anyway, I have also gotten lost going to goodwill before to buy more used tee-shirts because I am not comfortable in anything else these days, so I really related with the theme of this song about getting lost going to the FU-fill-ment CENNNNNN-tuuuuuu-hhhh!
We Know The Rats
This one is pretty awesome too. I also enjoy having an empty house sometimes, so spot on lyrics again. The guitars doing that twinkly thing in the background is great. All around good jam.
The Author
Again, thank you to genius.com for explaining to me that this song is about a Catholic Priest who had some pretty dark outlooks on life. If I was a Priest I would be sad as shit too so I can totally understand why he would be such a depressing world view. This song is great too, the second half of this album is leagues above the first in every way, it is almost an entirely different album and a much better one at that.
Rain Garden
Well, we have reached the end of this “PP” album. We close on another good track that harkens back to the more depressing aesthetic of the first half of the album while pumping some additional energy into it. I liked this one too, it has a very grandiose build up while holding on to the forbidding feeling that whatever we are constructing is about to all come crashing down around us because this relationship was doomed from the start. I dig it.
CONCLUSION: Its A Boop!
I still can’t comment on what feeling “Post Punk” is supposed to elicit based on this band or album. If I were to summarize the entire Subgenre based solely on this one album I would define it as “Blackflag doing coke with Peter Steele from Type O Negative”. Momentary blips of chaotic energy sprinkled between salty, downtrodden tracks that feel like they were recorded to a cassette that was left out in the sun to long. That is not in any way meant to be insulting, it has its agenda and I think this accomplishes what it set out to do. I think.
What I can say is that Formal Growth In The Desert is definitely an experimental sonic journey. It takes you through many different emotions and soundscapes that never leave you feeling like you actually want to be stopped at these seedy rest areas it drops you into. I mean you’re here though so you might as well go grab a snack from that sketchy looking gas station over there. I cant say I would want to come back to this record any time soon, but a couple of the tracks did stick with me as being genuinely interesting.
