by Alex Milstein (@thrillstein)
Back in 2015, shortly before Detroit-based Protomartyr released their third full-length, The Agent Intellect, I saw the band perform at Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia. This was still fairly early in their career, but it was immediately clear that the energy and chemistry between the band’s members was something I’d rarely seen matched.
They all clearly loved what they were doing, and each member had their own special quirk -- bassist Scott Davidson jumping up and down wildly; drummer Alex Leonard cracking sly, small smiles in between off-kilter drum fills; guitarist Greg Ahee slamming his guitar while chewing on wall-hung decorative beads; or frontman Joe Casey shooting strange and sinister glares at the audience between half-spoken and half-sung lyrics. Together, each brings a unique and essential piece to the complex puzzle known as Protomartyr.
Though a lot has changed since 2015 -- the band has since released two albums, The Agent Intellect and Relatives in Decent, as well as the Consolation EP, re-released their first album No Passion All Technique, put out the Old Spool and Gurges 1 EP and toured countless times -- the core members have stayed the same. That’s pretty impressive considering the band has been around for ten years.
It’s the chemistry between the members that makes them work so well together, something that Casey attributes to the fact that the members learned their craft together. When Protomartyr began, each member was fairly new to their instrument, so their latest album, Ultimate Success Today, is truly a testament to how much these musicians have grown over the years.
The album was recorded at Dreamland Recording Studio in upstate New York and features guest collaborators Jemeel Moondoc (alto sax), Izaak Mills (bass clarinet, sax, flute), Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello) and Nandi Plunkett (vocals). Collaboration was a key element in making Ultimate Success Today, and with it the band continues to distinguish itself as a unique force.
To learn more about the writing process and themes on the new album, I sat down with Casey to talk about a few choice tracks, what the album title means, and how the collaborations came to fruition.
Alex Milstein: What does the album title Ultimate Success Today mean and why is the phrase repeated in several songs?
Joe Casey: It’s one of those phrases you hear late at night when you’re trying to fall asleep and you’re watching an infomercial where they tell you how to flip houses or something. “Ultimate Success Today” seems to be like the American Dream.
What I like about a phrase like that is that it’s inherently meaningless. And what’s great about something like this is that it can be applied to many things, and the meaning can change based on the context.
The songs on the album kind of facilitate and examine each word separately. “Ultimate,” meaning the top or the last. Both the highest and the end. “Success,” what the fuck is this? Is it achievable or is it a carrot that keeps you moving down the trail? And “today,” for me, with it being the end of a decade and beginning of a new one -- I’m realizing I don’t know how many more decades I have -- I get nostalgic for the past. The past is full of people who are gone, and you can’t return there. What is today? It’s the only thing you really exist in.
The phrase also reminded me of our first album title, No Passion All Technique, which sounds triumphant but really isn’t. Of course, the title does open up a person that’s writing a bad review of the album to use some puns and plays like, “this is not Protomartyr’s ultimate success today.”
AM: That’s true, but I don’t think anyone should or will need to use that in this album’s case. But when you said that about the title, it reminded me of a past interview where you said Protomartyr has kind of become known as this misery band. How do you feel about this in regard to the new album?
JC: Being pigeonholed is death. It’s not good for the creative juices. But I think for the music that we’re making, I have to respond to my emotional state. And for the last album, it was, “oh my god, we just elected a fucking moron. The cracks that used to be painted over are now showing; what a disgusting world we live in.” For better or worse, lyrics have to show that.
This album, I was feeling pretty sick and feeling my age and wondering about tomorrow, so the lyrics reflect that. It’s just dumb luck that it’s coming out during a pandemic where the whole world is sick. I often feel like I want to avoid this misery band stuff. We could easily be a band of Draculas, but we’re not. I’m attempting to embrace life as I see it and I don’t know if that’s depressing or not. Someone could say we are all going to die and someone else might say that’s depressing, but it’s true.
PT: I heard that your collaboration with Kelley Deal on the Consolation EP was the first time you guys really collaborated with another artist in that way. Can you tell me a little bit about why you chose to collaborate with the artists you did on Ultimate Success Today and how that process worked?
JC: With Kelley, it was a little more like, “wherever she wants to take it, that’s where the song will go.” I think Greg wanted to continue that as a principle, and he knew he didn’t want to use a lot of reverb, effects or keyboards/synths like he usually does. We wanted to bring in collaborators who could replace what Greg did with effects so there can be more space in the songs, but also to collaborate and change the songs as they see fit.
The collaborators on this album are people we didn’t know ahead of time, and this was our first time doing this kind of thing. We knew Kelley. With your friends, they’ll be kinder to you, but you don’t want to present strangers and masters of their craft with a shitty song. And finding people to come collaborate was kind of piecemeal.
Getting Jameel Moondoc was amazing and something you wouldn't expect to happen for a band like us. We’re lucky to have him. Nandi Plunkett was able to do backing vocals without even coming into the studio -- she has a studio in her closet and was able to contribute that way. Working with each one was different. Izaak Mills is probably on the most songs and was at the studio the longest. He changed “Processed by the Boys” completely by adding that clarinet line, and it was like “now we’re cooking!” That’s the excitement of collaboration I guess.
AM: Nandi shows up on a few tracks throughout the album, but why did you choose to do a duet with her on “June 21”?
My shitty voice sounds interesting up against a woman's voice. I like the idea of doing duets, and I want to do more. But we pushed and pulled with producers about the level of her voice on the track. I knew she needed to be more toward the front; it’s the fifth song in and you’ve had four songs of me droning, so her coming in is like a splash of water in the face. A new twist that makes sense.
AM: Speaking of your vocals, I noticed you changed things up a bit on “Tranquilizer.” What was the thought behind the vocals on that track?
JC: I’ve always been fascinated about having vocals go through effects, and not just like some heavy duty stuff. I’ve had a few opportunities, like with the first record where I manipulated my vocal effects by hand as we were doing it. Since then, it’s been kind of a pain in the ass. When you tell an audio engineer that you want to add some effects, they’re either like “no” or “we’ll do that after everything else” or “we want a clean take.”
It also seems like the vocals always end up at the end, and it’s always after like three days of getting the drum sound right and 20 days of guitar sounds, then it’s like, “oh we only have two days to do vocals.”
My idea of having affected vocals always gets pushed to the side, so “Tranquilizer” was me returning to my roots. It was kind of push and pull where I had to explain the sound I wanted, and then I wanted it to be crazier. The only way I was able to do it is because my buddy Cory from the band Spray Paint owns a bar in New York near where we were recording. He was around and helped me do these vocals. He’s the king of yelling over effects.
AM: As a drummer myself, I love Alex’s off-kilter drum beats. But as a vocalist, what is your process for putting lyrics over something like that? Do you find it difficult?
JC: Sometimes I just try to ignore him. But with that, it’s just finding the right cadence. For me what makes it easier is that I’ll listen to the drum beat and think, “what’s the beat that stands out to me?” If he’s off beat, most of the time I don’t even know what that means. Whatever I can latch on to, that becomes my anchor for the songs. Sometimes it's not the main one you’re “supposed to be on.” It’s the freedom to dance with the drums a little bit. Greg will also be fighting to figure out how to align with drums, and that’s kind of the fun of it.
AM: Why did you choose the mule as the image for the album cover?
JC: I like using one image, regardless of it having anything to do with the music. There is a lot of stupid thought about why it’s a mule and why it looks that way, but as soon as we did the woman for the album cover of Relatives in Descent I knew what I wanted for the cover of Old Spool and Gurges EP as well as Ultimate Success Today. I also have an idea of what the next one is going to be, if there is a next one.
I do all the album art, and for me, I want to have a unified aesthetic style to it. It’s funny -- maybe I’ll actually get to achieve this -- but my dream is to use those little stick-on letters for everything. But what I hate is when people do that and make them crazy and crooked and all over the place. I tried and wanted to do my best to make them as straight as possible, and then over time, just by lack of motor skills and loss of eyesight, they’d get worse and worse and they would be like goofy letters all over.