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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.
Hotel Usona takes a strangely meditative approach to the madness. With Ahee’s aid, Protomartyr incorporate Middle Eastern influences and 1950s exotica music into the album: tubular bells, whirring harmonium, dreamlike xylophone. That mood music for a post-war America turns cheeky when merged with Protomartyr’s steady post-punk pulse, exacerbating the drama of the lyrics. Drawing out those looping sounds is renowned producer Dave Fridmann, as well as son Jon Fridmann on horns. “The Knife Dream” spirals into a haze of flugelhorn and euphonium; “Sounds We Cannot Hear” builds to a triumphant peak with French horn, trombone, and Rhodes piano. The complete arrangement softens the intensity of Casey’s narration (no matter how much real-life pain from an abscessed tooth he funneled into his takes) to express the kind of composed anger—“I’m not mad; I’m just disappointed”—that stings for longer.
By fictionalizing and compartmentalizing today’s problems, Casey finds a zen-like approach to farcical storytelling and the truth beneath it. Progress may be slow in the U.S., but it’s progress nonetheless. “As you go back and find your old self in this hotel… You would be ashamed you are still here,” warns Casey on the opening track. You almost want to blame Protomartyr for dressing up Hotel Usona with appealing arrangements that tempt you to stick around; in that sense, the music is a canny representation of how easily a decent person can become corrupt. Accomplished as they are, these songs radiate the rotten stench of unaccountable evil, warding off those who might otherwise find the whole package enticing.
