Protomartyr on Urinal Cake Records

Styrofoam Drone and I are doubleteaming this release from Protomartyr today...it had to happen sooner or later. Urinal Cake sent me this crazy story about Bubba Helms, who's the kid holding the Detroit Tigers banner, he was just a guy looking for his sad 15 minutes, and got them when the Tigers won and his photo between burning cars in the middle of a riot happened to symbolize everything that was wrong with the Motor City. Bubba's no longer with us and perhaps is the protomartyr of Detroit, and here's his single.

The A-Side first track is titled "King Boots", the name of the dog that's Bubba's sidekick up there on the sleeve. The vocal is seriously sounding like the Replacements guy, that working class raspy grease rock, which makes sense being about this maniac who ended up in People Magazine for all the wrong reasons. All backed by just as beefy, grimy chords. Kevin from Tyvek is on one of the guitars, a bass heavy, dirty guitar and a higher straight electric comes in, with this swath of layered distortion cutting bigger and bigger, the crashing finale leading right into "Bubba Helms" which uses a classic rock Zepplin scale guitar riff. This has a cramps feel, that reckless '50s abandon and a lyric that's half singing. There's probably some sunglasses involved, Bubba wants to party like it's 1984 and this track builds to crazy speed, of course it's going to get out of control. You see that guy who says "I want to party"? He's not going to be the responsible one.

B-Side's track, "Cartier E.G.S." then gets into a stuttered, weirdo no wave sound, the drums and bass really taking over with bursts of high treble distortion, and a snare march. Completely original, sort of a funk roll rhythm, absolutely genius.
It's such a great track, you even want some synth? Of course...this is fancy shit. Cartier! Damn. Joe on vocal is getting all sultry, talking about these glasses
"from france land / made in italy / from a chinese family"...it's worldwide class. I will find them.
It's the slickest, most perfectly produced track about exactly the opposite of what it's talking about. These guys are blowing my mind.
They then blow this out after all the minimalism into a hazy slick mess, a completely catchy bassline with a great one note heavy solo, because less is more.
It's like the musical excess era of Duran Duran sailing those yachts, hungry like the wolf, doing coke below deck, and in today's cultural climate, completely irresponsible. In other words punk as hell.
Combine this with The Psychedelic Furs, The National, Editors, Interpol, I know that isn't going to make sense except they're emulating that kind of sunglasses at night sound, just so fucking cool, so that lyrically they turn the whole thing upside down.

I will find them / I will find them

Turn the city upside down for the sunglasses, literally....that's what he wants in this song. Psychadelic furs for the 1%. Everyone else will love just what a hit this is.
He sounds drunk. I love this song.

Can't make out what these words are in the gutter here...maybe it's italian?
First one hundred copies on hot pants pink the rest on black.
I like the arial font stickers used as a design, that always looks great. Put together on a desk, actual size.

Urinal Cake Records says:

AVAILABLE NOW!!!


PROTOMARTYR 7" "King Boots, Bubba Helms b/w Cartier E.G.S" 300 pressed, 100 on pink vinyl. First 20 mail orders on pink vinyl.


Paypal $6 USD to urinalcakerecords@gmail.com