Uranium Club - All of Them Naturals

Pitchfork 73

Minneapolis’ Uranium Club seem to revel in being aggressively obtuse. They sprung up last year with their Human Exploration EP, an eight-song tape of some of the most tightly-wound, gleefully mean, and well-constructed punk to grace the underground in a while. Human Exploration quickly became a must-have of the punk scene, receiving multiple vinyl pressings, all while the band rejected any web presence and most interviews as well.

All of Them Naturals, their second EP, is Uranium Club indulging even more in such pranksterish qualities. The first two minutes of audio are pulled from the Nation of Ulysses handbook of sarcasm and myth-making, as a man with a vaguely British accent comments fictitiously on all the band has supposedly accomplished since its last record, from selling novelty pencils to distributing pamphlets for “pseudo-intellectual literature circles and swingers’ parties.” Uranium Club must know that people have been patiently waiting to hear more from them, and the final track of All of Them Naturals winkingly plays into that: it’s a 30-second “excerpt” of another unreleased song.

In between, Uranium Club spits out some pretty damn catchy, no-frills punk rock. They have quickly garnered comparisons to Devo, particularly the twitchy neurosis of the early Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! era. It’s not unwarranted. Both bands share an affinity for guitar riffs so soaked in treble they could cut ear drums, and for attempting to shove as many starts and stops into a song as possible. “God’s Chest” is the frantic centerpiece of this release, and maybe the most directly hooky thing the band has crafted; it even incorporates some haywire synths near the end, a first for the band.

Not that Uranium Club’s reference points are strictly in the past. The sour intro of “Operation Pt.II” clearly evokes Tyvek and the lo-fi punk that the Detroit outfit has been cultivating for over a decade, as do the relentless jagged hits of “The Lottery.” Contemporaries like the Coneheads (and, to a lesser extent, the enigmatic Northwest Indiana punk scene as a whole) have been melding old school punk love to the modern trash punk aesthetic, and are also here in spirit.

The real secret of Uranium Club, though, is how casually talented they are. Besides the ridiculous precision of their playing, the interplay of the guitars clearly takes some notes from Wipers; the music is decidedly crude, but it’s still played with a well-honed intensity that flares up again and again. The buzzsaw solo in the middle of “Opus,” or gradual buildup and release of tension on “That Clown’s Got a Gun,” wouldn’t hit nearly as hard if it weren’t performed so forcefully here. Every song relishes in a ragged intensity, but never for a moment feels as if it could spiral out of control or fall apart, a rarity for bands in this genre.

Of course, Uranium Club has the perfect mask for their technical skills: lyrics marred by a sardonic sense of humor. “The Lottery” spins a relentless tale of someone turning into an absolute monster upon hitting the jackpot, throwing everyone from their son to their mom under the bus. “Who Made the Man?,” with its constant repetition of that platitude, drives ever-darker emphasis on the consequences of your actions, from success to murder. Uranium Club is a band unafraid to toss a line like “Will you please piss on my teddy bear?” into a song for the pure sake of disorientation. The band clearly wants to keep everyone on edge. If the Uranium Club is anything, it is at least very self-aware of exactly what it is doing.