The Minneapolis Uranium Club Band - Infants Under The Bulb

Holy fuck, has it se­ri­ous­ly been a whop­ping five years al­ready since the last LP by one of the most in­flu­en­tial, defin­ing groups of the cur­rent era of quirky and in­tel­li­gent garage punk? It cer­tain­ly didn't seem that long to me and part of that might be down to their dis­tinct mix of play­ful, an­gu­lar and elab­o­rate garage- and art punk hav­ing been such an om­nipresent un­der­cur­rent of so many things that have hap­pened in the last few years, with groups such as Dumb, Vin­tage Crop, Pinch Points, Abort­ed Tor­toise, Re­al­i­ty Group, Yam­mer­er and Pat­ti be­ing on­ly the tip of the ice­berg con­cern­ing groups that ap­pear to have tak­en some in­spi­ra­tion from them at one point or an­oth­er. On their fourth LP so far, Ura­ni­um Club keep ex­pand­ing their styl­is­tic scope as well, show­cas­ing a ma­tured song­writ­ing abil­i­ty which pays off es­pe­cial­ly well in slow­er num­bers like the strum­my and folk-ish garage pop al­most-a-bal­lad Tokyo Paris L.A. Mi­lan, which unites some qual­i­ties of groups á la Wire­heads, Tyvek and The UV Race, or in The As­cent. with its pro­nounced Tele­vi­sion-es­que vibes. Like any of their pre­vi­ous al­bums, this is noth­ing short of an in­stant genre clas­sic!