Protomartyr put out Exalted Eagles, the last single before Hotel Usona

Protomartyr have released Exalted Eagles, the last song to be made public before their album Hotel Usona lands on 25 September. Stereogum posted the track on Monday afternoon, four days out from a release Domino is handling, and the band treated it as the end of the rollout rather than the start of another one.

Vocalist Joe Casey put it plainly in the note that went out with the song. "The last taste from Hotel Usona before it comes out on Friday," he wrote, then asked anyone who had now heard a third of the record whether they were sold on it. He finished by asking listeners to leave a review and tell their friends, on the grounds that the algorithm needs whatever help it can get.

That arithmetic is worth holding onto, because it is the only public hint at the album's shape: three songs out, a third of the thing heard. Casey has never been a writer who trails a record with half of it, and Hotel Usona has been previewed at the pace of a band that expects the album to be listened to in order.

Stereogum describes Exalted Eagles as a menacing meditation on patriotism that builds to a chant of "He approves us!" The title does the same work from the other side, taking a bird that belongs to the national seal and leaving it hovering over a song that plainly does not trust it.

The two songs before it went in different directions. Feed The Sewer, which we covered when it arrived last month as the second single from Hotel Usona, was the harder of the pair, and Sounds We Cannot Hear opened the campaign earlier in the summer. Taken together the three trace a record that keeps moving between dread and deadpan without settling in either.

The 25 September date sits on the release calendar in a week thick with autumn rock and indie albums, among them the run of singles DIIV have been putting out ahead of ZIRP!. Nothing about the tracklist, the running order or a tour behind Hotel Usona appears in Monday's report.