Relatives in Descent

Protomartyr trade in paradox. Smart but savage, gritty but beautiful, the Detroit post-punk outfit’s fourth album finds them diving deeper into their own strange grammar, flipping between discord and grace in the space of seconds. The result sounds at times like the work of swamp creatures and street urchins, poetry professors and barstool philosophers. And just when you think they’re about to break down—the sputtering march of “A Private Understanding”, the endless tension of “The Chuckler”—they surge forward like new life cracking its shell. With ugly like this, who needs pretty?