Protomartyr at Elsewhere (November 18, 2021)

It's hard to categorize a Protomartyr fan, which is appropriate because Protomartyr itself resists categorization, but the band has inspired a devoted following. This was evident at their show at Elsewhere on Thursday, November 18th where leather-clad punks, younger couples, midtowners in Patagonia vests, and older jazz heads, all stood transfixed as Joe Casey lead the Detroit band through an excellent and pulverizing set detailing the finer points of our collective end-times anxiety.

The band's music is not challenging per se, but it reflects a world fraught with environmental and economic peril, political division, and a creeping cynicism from the seemingly increasing violence of everyday life. It borrows from punk its loudness and antiauthoritarianism, but it's punk told with a jazz inflection, both in its musical fearlessness and Ultimate Success Today's, their recent records' wind instrument flourishes (filled in on guitar by Kelley Deal who joined the band on this tour).

At moments the set was ruminative, brooding, and meditative as well as a meditation on the fucked-upness of current existence. Even on mid-tempo songs, Casey’s staccato snarl more than once inspired a mosh pit. Maybe what attracts people to the band (aside from the fact that they are a powerful live band, and write the thinking person’s heavy music with good politics) is that there is healing to be had by acknowledging said fucked-upness the indignation from having to accept an unjust and often uncaring society. Protomartyr, maybe more than any other band, encapsulate this feeling perfectly, their music cagey straightjacket of fuzzed-out guitar, with Casey reciting post-apocalyptic poetry over it, the dancefloor a cathartic crush.