Compared by Iggy Pop to Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, the Americans’ new album sharpens their melancholic streak, enriched with orchestral arrangements.
For a long time, the Protomartyr guys have been excellent companions: to drink with, to brawl with, to wander the streets at night. Their music was the sound of chaos, of electric tension, of those moments that demand a little fury.
Since 2012, each of their albums has carried its share of morose thoughts, thwarted emotions, and unresolved dreams, up to the apotheosis Rain Garden, a funeral-march-like finale to Formal Growth in the Desert (2023). Three years later, the Detroit quartet refines this melancholic vein with Hotel Usona, their seventh album, which Iggy Pop has likened to Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.
The album’s symphonic ambition plays a major part in that. The brass arrangements, credited to the son of the album’s producer, Dave Fridmann, who is also involved behind the scenes. Suddenly, The Old Hotel, Sounds We Cannot Hear or Checking Out are no longer mere post-punk outbursts, but sophisticated ballads, meticulously crafted and consistently built around Joe Casey’s magnetic, deep voice, marked by the sense of anxiety that torments him daily.
Approaching fifty, the American writes here some of his saddest songs, never yielding to the temptations of ostentatious showmanship that would clash with the work of his band; those pieces you turn to when you seek a touch of authenticity, an extra measure of determination, and a little companionship on nights of doubt.
Hotel Usona (Domino/Sony Music). Release on September 25. In concert at the Trabendo, Paris, on February 19, 2027.
