Formal Growth In The Desert - Protomartyr: Review
are a Detroit post-punk band who've been around for over a decade and released 6 albums. Formal Growth In The Desert is the group's second release of the 2020s and follows Ultimate Success Today three years ago.
Review by Lav:
In the span of a few years, Protomartyr made a LOT of post-punk music that I really enjoyed. Their third and fourth albums The Agent Intellect and Relatives In Decent are still favorites of mind in retrospect and the band turned around and released some of their best material ever on the Consolation EP in 2018. Though I did enjoy Ultimate Success Today when I originally reviewed it back in 2020 but after a recent re-listen of the album I didn't think it was quite as interesting. That's something I wasn't really nervous about going into Formal Growth. Even though I have very mixed feelings on the singles one thing you can't call them is forgettable. This record definitely lives up to the promise it made of a number of micro-hits of the band's style in rapid succession but the quality of those hits is all over the place.
This record gets off to kind of a rough start and among the first sic tracks I really only like the start and end. Make Way is a pretty decent opener that I liked as a single even though Joe Casey sounds like a scary alternate universe Crain Finn, or maybe I like it because of hat. The meditative verses and short but booming hook is a format that works even if it could be a bit catchier. I also think Graft vs. Host is a pretty ripping track with directional guitar riffs and building intensity that I like a lot.
Elimination Dances has elements I like individually but I didn't think it came together into anything that compelling as a single and I'm still not crazy about it here. For Tomorrow has a bit more of a classic punk edge than I'm used to hearing from Protomartyr. A lot of the songs on this record read as sort of Idles-lite and it's a really strange fit.
Fun In Hi Skool has an instrumental that's pretty good with its tattering drums and splashes of glitchy distortion but I find both the lyrics and performance kind of cringey. It's a weird thing to say about Protomartyr but I think they just step too far out of their lane. Finally, there's Let's Tip The Creator, yet another instrumental highlight. There isn't really anything in the lyrics or melodies that I take issue with like some of the other tracks, but it also doesn't stick with me much either.
The second half isn't all highlights. 3800 Tigers seems to conflate real-life tigers with the Detroit baseball team which I think is pretty funny even if they seem to be playing it pretty seriously. Polacrilex Kid is a single I really didn't enjoy and I still think it might be the weakest song on the entire record.
Strangely enough, from this point on the record sort of begins to take form again. We Know The Rats fittingly lives up to the level of grime presented across much of this album. I love the driving dynamic guitars and confrontational vocals the whole thing fits together really well. It also follows the record's shortest track Fulfillment Center which supports it really well.
And it ends on a pretty solid note with The Author which resembles a classic Protomartyr song more than anything else here. And Rain Garden, a sweeping closer that does a better job of building compositional drama than much of the record's shorter flavors.
Despite the highlights the record does have, I think this is my least favorite Protomartyr album yet. They are pretty close to hitting on something here with a grittier and more fist-pumping embrace of punk. But too often they just sound out of their range, particularly on the vocal and lyrical side. This won't stop me from being excited for whatever they offer next as Protomartyr has always been a great band, but this is a record I knew right away I wouldn't come back to much. 5.5/10
For more post-punk check out my review of Shame's Food For Worms
