Protocol

Some songs open an album by announcing a mood. "Protocol" opens Cartwheel by announcing a policy. It is the policy of the person who decides, again and again, that keeping a relationship intact matters more than being proven right, and who finds out what that costs.

Will Anderson, the songwriter behind Hotline TNT, has a phrase for it. He describes the song as being about falling on a sword.^[1] The image is blunt, and so is the music: a big, bright, distorted rock song that sounds like it is smiling through a wince.

Where the song comes from

"Protocol" arrived on July 27, 2023, as the first single of Hotline TNT's Third Man Records era, released the same day the band announced its signing to Jack White's label.^[1] It later became the opening track of Cartwheel, which came out on November 3, 2023, and runs about thirty-three minutes across twelve songs.^[3]

Hotline TNT is, in practice, Anderson's project. He grew up in Wisconsin and passed through a string of scenes, including Minneapolis, Vancouver and Seattle, before settling in New York.^[5][4] Before Hotline TNT he spent years in a noise-rock band called Weed, and he played in about half a dozen indie bands in his twenties.^[4] He has said he figured he was finished with this kind of music before writing a handful of songs that became the first Hotline TNT release.^[4]

By the time of Cartwheel, the project had already built a reputation as a band that other bands loved. Stereogum called them a "your-favorite-band's-favorite-band" in its coverage of the single.^[1] The 2021 debut, Nineteen in Love, had been described as something like Slowdive trying to make punk rock.^[2] Cartwheel keeps that growl while smoothing the surface, a balance Paste's reviewer called remarkable.^[3]

On the album, Anderson plays nearly everything himself, with engineer-producers including Ian Teeple, who is credited with the keyboards on this track, helping him shape what Anderson has described as skeletons of songs into finished records.^[3][4]

A song about taking the blame

The core idea is simple and uncomfortable. Anderson has explained that sometimes you have to accept a loss even when your heart tells you the situation is unfair, because preserving the relationship is worth more than winning the argument now and then.^[1]

That framing matters, because it refuses the easy version of the story. This is not a song about a villain. It is about a narrator who knows the ledger is uneven and chooses to leave it uneven. The title suggests the method: a set of rules for getting through conflict, the procedure a person adopts when feelings become too tangled to improvise.

Protocols are what we build when we want to stop feeling our way through something. They are scripts. Apologize first, concede the point, let the silence pass. The song listens in on someone running that script and noticing, perhaps for the first time, how much of themselves is going into it.

Love as a series of small surrenders

The whole album orbits relationships. Anderson has said the songs are largely true stories from his life, and he calls himself a romantic.^[4] In an interview with Spin summarized on the album's Wikipedia page, he says the lyrics concern his interpersonal relationships, many of them romantic, with others about his parents, friends and bandmates.^[3]

That wider cast is useful for reading "Protocol". Although the song is easy to hear as a couple's story, the logic of taking a hit to keep the peace applies equally to a band, a family or a friendship. Anyone who has stayed in a group by swallowing a grievance will recognize the shape of it.

Touring plays a part too. Anderson has talked about how life on the road leads to many long-distance relationships and a scattered social life, and he links that to the emotional, exposed quality of his writing.^[4] Distance raises the stakes of every disagreement. When you cannot simply sit in the same room and repair things, a rule like "I'll take the blame" becomes a way to get a fragile connection through the week.

There is a quiet intelligence in how the song stages this. Rather than building toward a cathartic outburst, it lets the guitars keep a steady, almost ceremonial pace. The emotional release comes from the melody, not from a dramatic confrontation, which fits a narrator who has chosen composure over conflict.

Listeners who have been the peacemaker in a household or a friend group tend to feel that restraint in their bones. The song gives that role some dignity, while the distortion makes sure we hear what the role takes out of a person.

The sound of a wince

The music does as much interpretive work as the words. Stereogum's Chris DeVille described the song as a poppy '90s alt-rock cassingle warped by the sun.^[1] That phrase captures the double feeling. The melodies are inviting and the chords are bright, but everything is slightly smeared, like a tape left on a dashboard.

Paste heard roaring alt-rock in the vein of Teenage Fanclub with shoegaze-level static on top.^[10] A Sputnikmusic reviewer picked up a strong melancholic undertone in this song and in "Maxine", and connected it to the band's joking description of its music as something to listen to after redownloading a dating app.^[6]

The guitars are a big part of that. Premier Guitar notes that Anderson's distortion pedals, including a RAT, a Big Muff and a DS-1, work as percussive, resonant elements on "Protocol" and "BMX".^[5] The fuzz is not decoration. It acts like the narrator's inner noise, the swell of resentment that the song's chosen protocol keeps pushing down.

Anderson's vocal approach adds to this. Pitchfork's Ian Cohen praised his "humble, everydude voice", and Mojo heard a singer who buries his delivery in the mix.^[3] A voice that does not push itself forward suits a narrator who has agreed to take up less room.

Cartwheel and the problem of ordinary life

Reviewers have placed the album in a long line of loud, melodic guitar music. The Fire Note heard Bob Mould, Hüsker Dü, Sugar and Cloud Nothings, and argued that the record trades dreamy escapism for everyday realities.^[8] One Swim Into the Sound guest reviewer went further and called it this generation's Loveless, while recalling how "Protocol" blew his mind when he first caught it live, with the band opening for Snail Mail and Momma.^[7]

That contrast is the key to the opener. Shoegaze historically sounds like floating away from the self. On Cartwheel, the same walls of guitar are aimed at mundane, recognizable emotional chores: making up, backing down, being the bigger person when you are tired. "Protocol" sets that tone at the very start of the record.

Critics were largely enthusiastic. Pitchfork named the album Best New Music with an 8.4, and The Line of Best Fit gave it 9 out of 10, comparing the guitars to the contents of a lava lamp that morph and collapse in on themselves.^[3] Stereogum placed it eighth on its year-end list.^[3]

Making a record in pieces

The way Cartwheel was made echoes its subject. Anderson has said he arrived at the studio with skeletons rather than finished songs, and that Teeple pushed him hands-on to flesh them out.^[4] The sessions moved between Kansas City and several spots in Brooklyn, including a studio run by Aron Kobayashi Ritch and a space inside the old Pfizer building.^[3]

That patchwork process, one person carrying the songs while collaborators help finish them, is its own small protocol: a way of letting others in without surrendering the vision. Anderson's guiding principle, as he describes it, is to always be in your favorite band and to make the music you yourself want to consume.^[4]

It also helps explain the album's intimacy. A record largely played by one person, built around personal stories, can sound like a confession even when the guitars are enormous. "Protocol" is the first place that effect lands, and it frames the remaining eleven tracks as variations on the same question of how to be close to other people without losing yourself.

Other ways to hear it

The most generous reading is the one Anderson offers: a mature act of love, where choosing peace over vindication is a strength. In this version the narrator is not weak. The sword is a deliberate sacrifice, and the song celebrates the grace involved.

A more skeptical listener might hear the same song as a warning. Repeatedly taking the blame can turn into a habit that hides real problems, and a protocol, once adopted, can outlast the situation that called for it. The melancholy that critics noticed gives that reading some weight.^[6] The sunlit hooks may be what the narrator wants the relationship to feel like, with the warping and static showing what it costs to keep it that way.

There is also a reading that has little to do with romance at all. Anderson's own history is full of bands, moves and fresh starts, and a person who has spent years in collaborative groups knows how much compromise sustains them. "Falling on a sword" could just as easily describe the quiet diplomacy of band life.

Coverage around the release leaned on that tension. Our Culture noted the song's place in its roundup of the best new songs at the end of July 2023, and Anderson's own comments about the sister single "I Thought You'd Change" show the same interest in awkward emotional negotiations, in that case a friendship that someone wants to deepen and then wants to return to what it was.^[9]

Why it resonates

Most love songs are about falling in or falling out. Far fewer are about the long middle, where people manage each other's feelings and make small, unrewarded decisions to stay. "Protocol" lives there. It treats humility as a skill and a burden at once, and it does not pretend the trade is free.

It also tells the truth about timing. The wish to be right is strongest in the moment, and the benefit of letting it go arrives much later, if at all. The song packs that delay into four minutes of bright noise, which explains why listeners hear it as both a rush and an ache.^[6]

The track is credited as Anderson's own writing, with Teeple's keyboards in the mix, and it runs just over four minutes.^[3] As an opener, it gives the album its emotional thesis: love is mostly practice, and practice sometimes hurts.

Conclusion

"Protocol" works because it holds two truths at once. Giving way can be an act of devotion, and it can also leave a mark. By pairing a plainspoken idea with guitars that glow and smear in equal measure, Hotline TNT makes the sacrifice sound both beautiful and tired.

Listeners who come to Cartwheel for the volume will find it. The ones who stay will find a record about the unglamorous labor of keeping people close, and an opening song that sets out, in its sun-bleached roar, exactly what that labor can cost.