Protomartyr - Hotel Usona

Domino

Protomartyr's seventh studio album comes in the form of Hotel Usona - a more instrumentally extravagant and ornate update on the Post-Punk spheres in which the Detroit outfit have thrived within. Helping with said extravagance, Hotel Usona is produced by Dave Fridmann of Mercury Rev(founding member), Flaming Lips(produced many albums by them) and Tame Impala(mixed Lonerism) fame - the list also goes on in terms of engineering, producing and mixing credits. It is the first collaboration between Protomartyr's sound world and Fridmann's specialist ears and feel of fingers. 

Hotel Usona opens on the coldly echoing words of "The Old Hotel":

'Welcome back to the dream of a rotten mind

The rooms are half empty

The hallways are where you'll survive'

Back for more, although you know the outcome is forever out of favour. As you leave you enter once more. Past habits and ways circle back around. Inside-out. A brutal relationship with being. An inadequate sense of self, and everything else. Deserving of no more; always will be where always is. Born to burden. All suffering and no sense of release.

'The difference this time

Is that you're gagging for it'

'The change is a calender year

The pretense is order'

'This feeling's forever

As time flows backwards

Up at the old hotel'

An ornate sense of instrumentation gives this swirling sensation. Like falling through yourself; through past lives; through lives yet lived. Trumpets - wind instruments in general, played by Dave Fridmann's son, John Fridmann - are a more prominent feature this time round. They give off this agonising-victory feel - a win wrapped up in emperors new robes. An illusory step forwards. A gain that's a greater loss on further inspection; said further inspections are kept from occurring - held hostage. 

Lead single "Sounds We Cannot Hear" ramps up the acerbic bite which Protomartyr often dish out.  

'The scroll deforms the day

Poet screams "goodbye everybody"'

'A new vulgar comedy is targeting me'

Shallow mirrors breathe shallow reflection. You're only as deep as you seek. A bottomless brunch and the answers remain elsewhere. Buying time with not a penny to spare. 

'Complicity is compensated'

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Comply and fly. Nosedive from fantastic heights. 

'Wealth rules, THAT'S THE POLICY'

A great cycle of ages brings nothing new. Nothing to stand up or sharpen up for. No space to move into. The frame remains the same. Life moves on as it always has. A swift snails pace. 

A much more soothing, spacious, breathable soundworld is explored on "The Knife Dream" - the midway point on the album. A softer touch. Piano chords melancholically fall. Hazey, jazzy atmospheres rise - Miles Davis' Bitches Brew comes to mind. 

Information disease. Gangrene of the mind. Putrid overspill. Oversimulated. Corrupted. Fragmented. Landfilled. Picked apart and packed full of nothing more than not much. Feed the sewer, pal. Throw your fucking soul down it. 

'Ingorance feed the sewer'

'Content feeds the sewer'

'Fascists feed the sewer'

'Failure feeds the sewer'

"Lavender - Gospel" has this hypnotic quality to it - a contrast to the song's ever-relevant subject matter.

'It's tears are white, phosphorous'

'There's more dead this morning'

'Tonne bombs fall between the margin of error'

There's something hovering in the sky, made by man. Panopticon potential. All-seeing. All-knowing. Uncaring. 

The final three track run - "Lavender - Gospel", "Third Country" and "I'm Checking Out" - feels like the aftermath of a self-serving system falling underneath the weight of its own convenient inability to sense itself. 

Hotel Usona closes on Protomartyr's lengthiest track to date in "Checking Out". The misery dogs are barking. Louder every night. Seeing what's not there, or what is but you're too blind to see. On the wheel of time. Nailed down to this existence. 

'And me? I'm checking out'

This hotel, this world, this what-have-you has nothing to give you. It will continue on as it has done. As you leave the hotel, and as time flows backwards, you hear in the distance: welcome back. welcome back. welcome back.