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Protomartyr – Hotel Usona

Drawing on the more troubling aspects of life in the US, the Detroit post-punk veterans treat their latest conceptual release as though stepping headfirst into a house of horrors.

The first thing that stands out about Hotel Usona, the latest and arguably more austere work from Protomartyr, is that it isn’t a pleasant experience, nor should it be. Drawing on the more troubling aspects of life in the US, the Detroit post-punk quartet treats their latest conceptual release as though stepping headfirst into a house of horrors. Imagining the country as a deteriorating hotel, each song inhabits a different side of the abject conditions permeating contemporary life. For a band known for its sharply political stances, they’re certainly outdoing themselves.

Even at their most explicit, frontperson Joe Casey gravitates toward a bleak, dreamlike poetry. On “The Grand Hotel,” the album’s darkly ironic introduction, Casey welcomes its guests for a stay where misery is “an order to the filled” over a horn-led, dim-lit setting. The environment quickly turns hostile on the urgent “Sounds We Cannot Hear,” an anxious monologue on the pervasive contradictions we succumb to when scrolling through our phones. Its intense yet breath-taking trumpet and brass arrangement is matched by forceful drum fills, offering another fine showcase of the band’s dissonant interplay.

Casey has expressed great pride in “The Knife Dream,” which, while not cited as a direct influence, carries a dark, noirish quality that brought vintage Ethio-jazz to mind. It’s destined to become a highlight in an already distinguished discography. Credit to Greg Ahee, the band’s guitarist and main architect, who continues to expand their musical vocabulary as other post-punk acts of their era have stalled or fallen behind. For all the cinematic sweep of their recent work, they’ve retained their playful side. Take the curiously arranged “Converts,” a personal favourite of mine, where Ahee meshes warped guitar tones with layered synths to create its shadowy atmosphere.

While most of Hotel Usona can often feel like a forceful blow, the band can also unsettle through creeping imagery. Lavender - Gospel initially sedates you with a foreboding horn until Casey turns his attention to the atrocities of systematic destruction through AI-enabled weapons: “Dumb bombs fall within the margin of error.” Other declarations, like the paranoid rallying cry of “Feed the Sewer,” are less nuanced: “Dinner is served in the crypto ballroom/all love has left his eyes.” For someone like Casey, whose strength lies in his lyrical specificity, the gradual pivot toward more universal concerns occasionally doesn’t land. But this far into his career, he’s more than earned the right to be as explicit in his condemnation.

Protomartyr's different releases exhibit varying degrees of sombreness. While Hotel Usona can feel unifying in its purpose, detailing the frightening conditions of a nation, it also presents them in strange, deeply uncomfortable ways. It’s the Lost Highway of David Lynch films, one might say. Like that film, the hotel—or the United States itself—has become a nightmare whose principles you can’t quite articulate. The band goes to great lengths to document the dangers we've practically become immune to, clinging to the one remaining shred of hope that, one day, we might wake up.