Let’s face it: the industry expectation is that rock
music is for, by, and about young’uns. Protomartyr bucks these expectations.
Singer Joe Casey is dealing with the unsexy reality of losing parents, the long
look down the decline slope of what
comes after age 40. Sonic precedents abound: it’s easy to hear traces of the
Fall, Joy Division, Girls Against Boys, but The
Agent Intellect is not retro. Rather, the record exists in and ruminates on
the now, be it under the well-heeled dystopian umbrella of technology, or,
alternately, the crushing mundanity of loss. The weight of this jumbled present
is overwhelming, occasionally contradictory and senseless. Rather than back down from the precipice of
decline and confusion, Protomartyr has reported the situation as they see it in The Agent Intellect, an
uncomfortable, honest and ultimately excellent record.
