Protomartyr - Hotel Usona [Indie Exclusive]

Protomartyr's seventh album was recorded with Dave Fridmann at Tarbox Road Studios in western New York, which is a stranger pairing than it first appears. Fridmann built his reputation on the widescreen psychedelia of The Flaming Lips and MGMT; Protomartyr build claustrophobia. What comes out of that collision is the most sonically expansive record the Detroit band have made, and by some distance the bleakest.

Joe Casey has spent two decades narrating American decline from a barstool, and on Hotel Usona he is reckoning directly with the horrors of the present moment. He has imagined his country as an aging hotel, and the conceit gives the album its architecture. Greg Ahee co-produces and plays most of what is not bass or drums, with Alex Leonard and Scott Davidson holding a rhythm section that has never sounded more like a threat.

It is not easy listening. That has been true of every Protomartyr record and it has never once been the point. What they do, better than almost anyone working, is turn what frightens and disgusts and enrages us into something you want to hear again.

This indie exclusive pressing is on gold vinyl with a poster, out September 25, 2026 through Domino. Limited to independent retail.