Returning to their practice hub, a former optician’s office in Southwest Detroit, the guitarist of the post-punk quartet Protomartyr, Greg Ahee, turned to bands such as The Raincoats, post-punk legends. The Pop Group and Mica Levi for inspiration. The result? Relatives In Descent, their fourth LP to date and their debut for Domino Records. It presents a sort-of concept album: 12 tracks that unearth truth, venturing into the existential nature of not-knowing and the daily dread that comes with it, something that singer, Joe Casey, puts in very real terms: “I used to think that truth was something that existed, that there were certain shared truths, like beauty. Now that’s being eroded. People have never been more sceptical, and there’s no shared reality. Maybe there never was.” Sit tight, this one isn’t for the optimists among us, but perhaps the realists.

“Sorrow's the wind blowing through / Truth is hiding in the wire” snarls Casey on the album’s opener, ‘A Private Understanding’, a track solidified as the album starter the second it was written. Its visceral energy rumbles from the starting gun; although they are now signed to a pretty sounding indie-major, the band have clung to their bedraggled forlorn sound. Drummer, Alex Leonard, and bassist, Scott Davison, remain as tight and compact as ever, grounding songs, leaving Ahee to cause combustible chaos above with his guitar. Setting common comparisons aside except on this one occasion: ’Here Is The Thing' walks a line so finely chalked by Mark E. Smith with its ‘Mountain Energy’ swagger. It’s got power and charisma but, more importantly, Casey shows fear, he shows the existentialism that Relatives In Descent so directly addresses, becoming the victim of his album’s own statement leaves him with vulnerability. You know what though? It’s so f*cking exciting to hear.

You see, vulnerability breathes throughout the album – it becomes the album’s maker and its marker. Defining how we question the world around us is something that we rarely do, if ever. Casey’s lyrics do just that. They are spat, not sung – venomous and abrasive with their force, they chip away at you, revealing and taunting your own fear: “To save money / For his plain wife / My stupid son never grasped the finer points of life,” laments Casey on ‘Caitriona’. Where he holds glimmers of melody is when surrounded with erratic violins on ‘The Chuckler’, a track that finds Casey turning attention to meaning and pleasure, picking apart the signifiers and signified, leaving little room between:

“It meant a lot to me then, it matters less to me now
And any pleasure derived
Was knowing that they'd never feel as good
As a badge pinned on a thrift store coat that smelled of sauerkraut and cloves”

With the truth brought crumbling down, what are we left with? Apparently not much the Detroit quartet would suggest on what is their most refined and poignant album to date.

The sound is anxious, fraught and vexed from the off. It leaves little room for manoeuvrability. ‘Windsor Hum’ continues the stark British post-punk sound, with Casey lumbering into his most Colin Newman form whilst mocking the phrase “everything is fine,” rendering it to nothing but the aimless capsule of anxiety-sedative it perhaps is.

It’s a complex album though. Musically it is razor sharp, Ahee’s guitar work on ‘Up The Tower’ and ‘Corpses In Regalia’ is slitting, it rips through you, only blunted occasionally through Davison’s thundering bass that provides a plaster for the wound. Lyrically, Casey turns to the work of writers such as the Irishman Máirtín Ó Cadhain and Robert Burton, with his sprawling 17th century masterpiece, ‘The Anatomy Of Melancholy’ – a novel packed with confirmation and solace. Ironically, Casey picks at humankind’s own personal nadir – the masking of truth – after all, ignorance is bliss.

‘Male Plague’ is a track that pits itself as a contender for one to be remembered this year. One that should be etched in your grey matter and left to sit there for a while. It’s aggressive in the same vein that Protomartyr’s British counterparts, LIFE, seem to swim throughout – Casey’s lyrics slur over the verse before erupting in the football-fan-chat chorus:

“You think the world owes you a stroke
Male plague, male plague
Fear of the future – losing your hold
Male plague, male plague”

What Casey picks at here is masculinity’s pressures; its expectation of endless-ambition with no glass ceiling to hit and ultimately, its downfalls – the fact, and realisation, that nothing should ever be taken as given. An important comment upon an issue that is so frequently left unaddressed.

Relatives In Descent is an album that asserts authority within a swamp of mundanity. It’s an exceptionally intelligent album – something that bands so frequently skirt around in the modern day – but ultimately, it’s disconcertingly relevant and important. Filled with restlessness and the acknowledgement of the easy-to-avoid truths, it’s a kick in the teeth for the dreamers and for those that turn a blind eye. This can pan either way for listeners but, in my humble opinion, it’s bloody important to understand. As Relatives In Descent comes full circle, it tears the flesh from 'truth', with no punches held back – hair by hair and layer by layer, Casey attacks, ending on the phrase “Truth is the half-sister / That will not forgive / She is still trying to reach you.” Throughout the album, lightness and optimism are teased, but the final refrain shows you’re still a hell of a long way from it.

Tom Churchill

Website: protomartyrband.com
Facebook: facebook.com/protomartyr