Do you take your punk with saxophone? Do you like post-angular guitars and rhythmic, near-spoken vocals?
If so, Uranium Club is probably right for you. Apparently they call this egg punk nowadays. I would have called it art-punk. It definitely runs in the left-of-the-dial, DIY punk world, but has that glasses-wearing, proud-of-your-weirdness element that makes it hard to pin down to a single descriptor. It sounds like Wire and The Fall and maybe a touch of Lifter Puller and Shellac…kind of. In many ways it reminds me of No Wave era, but with modern production and some surprises along the way, all connected by hypnotic, head-nodding rhythms. It has the dynamic creativity of ‘80s Touch & Go and the personality of early punk. While it wanders fertile creative ground, there’s just enough traditional song structure to keep cohesive and digestible.
The band get right into the thick of it with “Small Grey Man.” It has that Lifter Puller-like storytelling yarn thing going on, but the music is more anxious, almost stream-of-conscious. In this song (but not all of them), a saxophone weaves it all together, a steady melodic presence that connects the disparate points. Then a second vocalist pops in, dropping a striking verse that almost gives a telethon-tone. The vocalists compliment each other’s styles, coming together to share a story, rather than just narrate it. It’s weird to apply show-don’t-tell to songwriting, but that’s exactly what they do through the whole record. They even have a song named “Abandoned By The Narrator” to double-down on that point.
Speaking of alternating styles and storytelling, there is the 4-part “Wall” series of interludes, which tell an Eastern-style parable and nearly overshadows the record itself. It’s so well done that the songs in-between almost feel like filler on side 2 as you’re waiting for resolution. I exaggerate a little bit here, as there is no filler here. I just wanted to know how the story was going to end. The music is very much the message, too, obviously. “Viewers Like You” and “2-600-LULLABY” are punchy angular post-punk tracks, a slap-happy bass drives “Game Show,” near cartoonish guitars rule “Abandoned By The Narrator,” and “Tokyo Paris L.A. Milan.” is a catchy sing-song affair. The recording captures the energy really well, teasing of an intense live show but simultaneously holding its ground as a recording.
I missed the hype when the band released The Cosmo Cleaners: The Higher Calling Of Business Provocateurs in 2018. But it’s 2024 and I’m playing Infants Under The Bulb a lot, and digging deeper into Uranium Club’s catalog too.
