Protomartyr's Joe Casey on the Legacy of Detroit and Looking Like Jared Polis

“I have to admit I like things that have a cynical — or I’ll say realistic — view of the world. Sometimes cynicism can be too much. As you get older, you do want to see a nice story of old people being happy and dying slow deaths,” says Joe Casey, lead vocalist of Detroit-based post-punk band Protomartyr.

We're catching up with Casey during the "calm before the storm,” as he calls it; the band is embarking on its North American tour, which includes a sold-out stop at the hi-dive on Tuesday, March 28, in support of its sixth studio album, Formal Growth in the Desert.

Since the band got started in 2010, Protomartyr has made a name for itself for standing slightly outside the punk norms. Riding intense dynamics, the band creates a sonic landscape rich in anxiety and understated aggression, propelled ever forward by guitarist Greg Ahee, bassist Scott Davidson and drummer Alex Leonard. All of this lays the groundwork for Casey, a prophetic yet unassuming frontman whose mumbling, almost lecturing vocal style gives extra weight to the emotional impact of his deeply literary lyrics.

Clad in a suit jacket and with drink in hand, Casey is the drunk stepdad, the angry accountant, the failed history teacher, spewing poetic barbs and philosophical references. He’s the vision of the modern American male settling into middle age, smoking one too many cigarettes and having one too many cocktails before launching into a diatribe on the failures of American capitalism. Only he does so over blistering guitar and swelling punk beats.

At the same time, Casey can’t help but see some absurdity in that image in which he is the butt of the joke, though it's something he graciously accepts. At 43 years old — a decade older than the rest of the band — Casey has become an anti-rock star of sorts, simply by being a regular guy, which is part of Protomartyr's appeal. Everyone has a Casey somewhere in their lives, and audiences eat it up. So much so that there is even a Tumblr page dedicated to descriptions of Casey from different news outlets and social media posts; one description that confused him was that he looked like an accountant. “I’m usually wearing a shirt that has flowers on it or something. I’ve never seen an accountant dress like me. They always say, ‘His suit and his tie' — I never wear a tie. It’s not what I’m wearing that makes me look like an accountant; it’s my face. It looks like someone put up a thumb with some eyes on it,” says Casey.

Casey recalls a moment from the band's last time in Denver, when it played the Bluebird Theater in 2018. “I was outside smoking after the show, and someone said I looked like, at that point, the future governor [Jared Polis]. I remember saying, 'You have to be careful with this, because when you say someone looks like somebody, I don’t know what this guy looks like, but if I look at this person and he’s ugly, I’m going to think you’re insulting me,’” Casey says. “It’s never as flattering as you think. At the time, I remember thinking, 'Is everyone in Denver high?' They just have this attitude of ‘I’ll tell you what I think.’”

Over Protomartyr’s six studio albums, Casey has established himself as a prolific and critically acclaimed lyricist. He has often been saddled with the title of "punk poet," but being called a poet is not something he's completely comfortable with.

“I don’t consider myself a poet, because I don’t know the craft very well — and I think there are people actually very good at it,” says Casey. “Some of my friends from college are honest-to-goodness published poets, so I’d hate to be like, ‘I’m a poet, too.’ I like petting animals, but that doesn’t make me a veterinarian.”

One of the most fascinating things about Protomartyr is its association with its hometown of Detroit, and the connection audiences and critics have made between Protomartyr’s hard-edged, contemplative sound and the perception that Detroit is a city in decay. It's an easy connection to make for audiences with a fascination with the city that was once the industrial backbone of America.

“I knew early on that people were fascinated by Detroit in the right way because of the music that comes out of it. Better music than it should comes out of Detroit,” says Casey. “And they’re also fascinated because it’s a symbol of America in a lot of ways. As goes Detroit, goes America, and I still feel that. A lot of the things Detroit deals with and has dealt with, everyone’s going to be affected by. The Flint water crisis — that’s going to be very common soon, and mostly where poor people live. I didn’t mind the comparison in the beginning, but I never wanted it to come off as I was the voice of the city. ‘Their music sounds like working on an assembly line.’ I couldn’t even change my oil if I wanted to.”
Protomartyr plays the hi-dive, 7 South Broadway, at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 28. Show is sold out.