Detroit’s smartest punch-drunk post-punks Protomartyr have a new album coming. It’s called Relatives in Descent, and it’s out September 29 via their new label Domino. To accompany the news, they’ve also released a video for “A Private Understanding,” the opening track. Over an off-kilter drumbeat, bellower-in-chief Joe Casey gives a vision of America in 2017–“this age of blasting trumpets, paradise for fools”–before heading into murkier waters. “Elvis outside of Flagstaff, driving a camper van,” the second verse begins. “Looking for meaning in a cloud mass, sees the voice of Joseph Stalin.”
The “A Private Understanding” video features Marty Smith, a 78-year-old standup comic from the band’s hometown, delivering Casey’s lines as an old man at a bar with a disinterested audience. Watch it below and see the Relatives in Descent cover art and tracklist after that.
1. “A Private Understanding”
2. “Here Is the Thing”
3. “My Children”
4. “Caitriona”
5. “The Chuckler”
6. “Windsor Hum”
7. “Don’t Go to Anacita”
8. “Up The Tower”
9. “Night-Blooming Cereus”
10. “Male Plague”
11. “Corpses in Regalia”
12. “Half Sister”
