Minneapolis's punk rockers Uranium Club, fronted by vocalists and guitarists
Harry Wohl and Ian Stemper, were practitioners of
spoken-word punk-rock.
The 23-minute album Human Exploration (2014) is an amateurish work that
contains the
demented Devo-esque garage-rock Black Semen (one of their signature "songs") and the
stomping Rafter Man, notable for its crescendo of guitar noise.
Another 23-minute album, All of Them Naturals (2016)
showed improved narrative verve in
That Clown's Got A Gun,
Operation Pt II and especially
Who Made The Man? (another signature song).
The Cosmo Cleaners (2019) contains the
elastic boogie rhythm of Flashback Arrestor and the
galvanizing guitarwork of Grease Monkey, but
the 12-minute Interview With The Cosmo Cleaners is a spoken-word piece
that turns into a psychedelic jam, and
the eight-minute Michael's Soliloquy is not musical at all.
As usual, there is little variation between one song and the other.
Five years later,
Infants Under the Bulb (2024) slightly improves the musicality.
The
Frank Zappa-esque Viewers Like You (enhanced with a horn section)
is certainly a different beast than the
trotting surf instrumental Game Show
or the
horns-enhanced country ride Big Guitar Jackoff in the Sky,
not to mention the folkish rant Tokyo Paris L.A. Milan that is actually sung (not just spoken).
But the second half is again a litany of identical songs, and it doesn't help that four of them (all titled "The Wall") are spoken-word pieces.
