Crème de la CREEM

It’s been said that music is just spicy air. Well, if that’s the case, then we’d like to intro you to the Mala Masala Scotch Bonnet Ghost Pepper-est of all air, Creme de la CREEM1 Here we handpick four bands that we consider to be the spicy meatballs of tomorrow. Mamma mial

URANIUM CLUB
Drummer Matt Stagner would like to assure you that Minneapolis Uranium Club do not collectively or individually have an overly small bladder, nor are they fueled by pharma-grade speed, crystal meth, or any other stimulants—they just play really, really fast. “I feel like our live sets operate faster and faster because we feel like a hardcore band and utilize our live energy as the thrust forward,” adds bassist Brendan Wells. “It comes from a place of rock ’n’ roll in the broad sense of it—intensity, speed, and tasteful technicality. But it feels natural to us.”

But as Gang of Four once sang, “natural’s not in it.” Minneapolis Uranium Club’s fuel-injected performances whiz along at seemingly impossible speeds, featuring riffs that are as technically impressive as they are melodic. MUC exploded in popularity in punk circles starting in 2015 due to word of mouth and their similarly incredible cassette debut, Human Exploration. Coming out of the Minneapolis-area punk scene, the band’s clean-tone grand prix brought to mind a more furious early Devo, flirting with math rock and prog but with a decidedly snarling punk outlook and Swiss-precision start-stop rhythms. Human Exploration had a wide release in January 2016 on LP and digital, and the band’s two follow-up LPs did nothing to dull that blade, cementing the their reputation for banger recordings and a live show that was over the top with fun props and gimmicks yet somehow increasingly more dizzying and furious with each outing. Red Bull, maybe? Wait...Celsius drinks!

Well, you can calm all the speculation about guarana, Adderall, and matcha for Uranium Club’s fourth LP, Infants Under the Bulb, recorded in June of 2023 and ready for release on March 1 via Static Shock in the U.S. While the second half of the LP is classic MUC, a speed-freak journey through razor-wire clean riffs delivered over head-spinning math-rock-y time signatures with monotone vocals, the first half is where the band spreads its wings, leaning into Talking Headisms, indie rock, ambient, and spoken word—showing diversity beyond just mind-melting instrumentation. It all adds up to a sound that resembles Devo meets Yes, or as Wells describes it, Kraftwerk meets Crass. Neither are far off: The icy-cold approach of the band mixes with shifting time signatures, technical riffing, and a punk aesthetic juxtaposed with an ear for melody and musical evolution.

So what was different this go-round? “We had so much more time,” recalls guitarist Harry Wohl. “That and we rehearsed for recording the new album for a year and a half or something. So we had a lot of time, and we were all living in Minneapolis, which isn’t always the case. I haven’t been living in Minneapolis consistently for the last couple years. In the past we had, like, two days max to track and do everything. So this time we had a little bit more time to be comfortable, so we had other instrumentation and musicians come in and put stuff on the record too.”

And so that community feeling that fueled the Crass collective can be found on Infants Under the Bulbin fact, not only on that record but off as well. Leaning on their greater friend circles, the band also has looked to their community to help with their costumes and prop-heavy live show. Light fixtures, banners, oversize items, jumpsuits, and sunglasses, sweaters littered with “pending” logos, and a “spinning hypnosis wheel” have all made appearances in the past and will again once the band hits the road for more dates. It just goes to show that there is no idea that can’t be accomplished with the help of a DIY aesthetic and a can-do attitude. “You can have lofty goals and you can figure out ways to accomplish them,” says Stagner matter-of-factly. "It doesn’t necessarily require money or too much time. There are ways to figure these things out—just gather your social and personal resources and connect with your community.”

But first, you’re gonna need the idea, and if there’s one thing for sure, there is no shortage of those in the ranks of Minneapolis Uranium Club. “A lot of the ideas for props come from [MUC guitarist Ian Stemper], for sure. Even before the band had a name, he was building props to go along with the show,” says Wells. ’’We’re all creative people and want to do stuff to add to the live show, whether that’s seven-foot-tall pencils or a banner that is too long and would wrap around the back of the stage. It can be kind of annoying, and the props break, but it’s all for the cause.”

The cause being one of the best live shows out, headed your way in 2024. With a cooler of ice-cold Monster Energy? Maybe that’s their secret.

GRAHAM HUNT
If a band tells you their goal for a song is to be as cool as the blood rave scene from Blade, are you more or less likely to buy their record? If your answer is “more,” then The Masked Singer is probably your idea of high art and check out this band called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. But if that idea tickles your pickle, then you just might fall in love with the latest Graham Hunt LP.

Granted, Graham Hunt’s work has nothing to do with being doused with buckets upon buckets of O-positive while wearing latex, but it does take the big-beat sounds of that crimson dancehall and mixes it with a ’90s indie rock/alt imprint. Think of bands like Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, the Charlatans UK, or maybe even better yet Matthew Sweet, particularly his power pop masterpiece “Girlfriend.” “I remember when I was really young, my parents and my aunt and a lot of my mom’s side of the family would always listen to ‘Girlfriend,’” recalls Hunt fondly. “I’m sure that had imprints in my brain because I was so little and it was one of the first times that I remember being curious, like, What is this? This is making me feel good to hear it.’”

Graham Hunt’s new LP is called Try Not to Laugh, and if you do, it'll only be at how accomplished and fun it is. Propelled by funky drums, ’90s alt is painted with broad strokes on the new effort, bringing to mind everything from Pavement to Meat Puppets to the Rentals without ever lingering in one place long enough that you can label Hunt a biter. Instrumentation is far from limited to the standard guitar/drums/bass setup, bringing in piano, synths, all manner of percussion, violin, samples, and the kitchen sink. But it’s all anchored by Hunt’s inviting, well-executed, semi-slacker vocals. The final product is ambitious, eclectic, grandiose, and far from lo-fi or full-on slacker; an impressive, fully realized vision that probably should have been on some yearend lists if there were justice in this world.

On tour, Graham Hunt loops in some of his most accomplished friends to join him, but make no mistake—when he calls his band Graham Hunt, he means it. The bulk of the writing and all of the demoing can be attributed to the main dude. “I’d say that 80 percent are parts that I write and have ready, and the rest is whoever is around that can add their own touches to it,” says Hunt. “I always have guests on all my records, and it’s just sort of random people in my circle. It can get kind of suffocating and completely isolating, making music. I do miss having a band where I can bounce ideas off people constantly, but this is sort of my process right now.”

Hailing from Wisconsin, Graham Hunt is no newbie, having played in bands like Midnight Reruns and serving as a live member of DUSK (Amos Pitch of Tenement’s project) and part of Mike Krol’s backing band. But his most recent dates with Narrow Head may have given the project some more visibility of late. And just like anything in music, it’s a telephone game between musicians of a certain mindset. “I would say Bloomington, Indiana, has a lot to do with how that tour with Narrow Head happened,” recalls Hunt with a pensive deep breath. “I played there with Julia from DUSK a couple of years ago—a really small tour—and the guy who booked it in Bloomington runs this record label Let’s Pretend, his name is Pete. Sam from The Smoking Room did my last record (If You Knew Would You Believe It?}, but he couldn’t do it on vinyl. Pete asked if he could, and he showed it to Cora from Narrow Head and supposedly that was the only record that they could all agree upon in the van.”

But success to Hunt doesn’t mean just big tours with recognizable names or even recognition at all—just putting together things that he can be proud of and look back upon fondly. As an example, Hunt name-checks the great Cleaners From Venus and the mastermind behind that band, Martin Newell—the subject of the recent documentary The Jangling Man. “Sometimes I think about Martin Newell because I can kind of relate to the idea that he just made albums. He just kept doing it and no one cared and no one was listening. That’s sort of the narrative at least,” recount’s Hunt about the elusive but prolific artist. “He just kept making them in his basement, just doing his own thing. And when people started to figure him out, it was many years later and he already had this huge body of work.”

And with his fourth LP, Try Not to Laugh, making huge ripples in the water and three well-crafted LPs of a similar ilk in his catalog, sounds like that Martin Newell dream may happen sooner rather than later.

FINNOGUN’S WAKE
“Yo check it out—it’s all about animal voices, brother,” Tim “Shogun” Wall explains while I sit at the edge of my seat. “We have the cow voice which is grunge and then we have the mouse voice which is where English pop music went for the past 20 years. It’s like a total blight on English pop music—who decided that was a listenable, enjoyable voice? Bands with that frail, soft, mousy voice like Travis and shit like that.”

I imagine a legion of wimp rock bands from the U.K. inspired by Chris Martin and crying themself to sleep because they were no good at footie or got daily wedgies in grade school. It makes perfect sense—mousy and limp as opposed to grand and emotional with a big bang. It really gets me thinking about the cow voice. He must mean that quintessential yawp and warble that Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam did naturally, but 1,000 radio rock bands from Stone Temple Pilots to Godsmack to Collective Soul all adopted.

“The cow voice—it’s the caricaturization of Layne Staley. That guy’s voice fucking rules, but rock just kept cowing it out until you’ve got Nickelback and Puddle of Mudd and on and on until you can almost hear that bullring in their nose clanging against the microphone.”

If it seems like Shogun is hypercritical, he is and he has the right to be—as vocalist for Sydney’s Royal Headache, he took the “punk vocalist” stereotype and smashed it into a million fragments, sounding like Sam Cooke or some old soul singer atop tuneful, melodic punk rock. The band’s two LPs, the self-titled and High, are two of the most underrated and perfect entries in melodic punk in the past 20 years, and that owes no small debt to the soulful croon of one Tim Wall. Eat your heart out, Paul Weller.

And with his new project Finnogun’s Wake, he joins Finn Berzin as co-songwriter and co-vocalist to revisit some of those classic Britpop sounds while avoiding the (mouse) traps that come with it and sticking with a sound that always works: unfiltered emotion. “Heart... lots of heart and a whole lot of raw emotion,” explains Berzin when asked what we can expect from their upcoming material on the What’s Your Rupture? label. "I think when Shogun and I started writing these songs we didn’t think it would ever leave the bedroom. I think it all really became serious when we realized that there was some weight to some of the tunes, and from there we formed a lineup and started playing shows. These songs were written in pretty desperate and challenging times, and I think it shows through the way we sing and the lyrics we share.”

So considering Shogun’s incredible vocals, why would he agree to split duties on the new project? The answer is simple and throws back to his time with Royal Headache—because he really, really wanted to. “I actually got really sick of being in the spotlight as the front guy because I cut my teeth as a guitarist,” recalls Shogun. “I only joined Royal Headache when I was 28, so that was my first time where I was front and center, and I kind of got sick of it. Finnogun’s Wake is collaborative—we both sing. It’s 50/50 with the writing and singing, and I play guitar, too. So I’m not sort of just right up there being a diva like some Whitney Houston kind of figure.”

However we can get him, we’re glad to have Shogun back on vocals. And with Finnogun’s Wake’s new Stag Young EP, you can hear the strands of Royal Headache’s attention to melodicism and impeccable songwriting, but with this new twist that nods at the Gallaghers, Suede, Creation Records as a whole, and more. It’s a truly fun and triumphant four songs that leave us salivating for more. But don’t worry, FW have us covered. “In terms of future stuff, we’re already working on the next release,” dishes Finn on future efforts. “It’s punk and has even more attitude than this release. It’s a mix between some of our favorite bands like Hiisker Dii, Oasis, and even the Jesus and Mary Chain.”

And the songs crackle with life on record—you can just hear the soulful croon that Shogun is so famous for and how lovely it will represent in real life. CREEM just needs to get them out to the U.S. for some shows, which will hopefully happen sooner rather than later. “I would love to come tour the States sometime soon,” says Finn when asked about possible U.S. dates, and Shogun definitely agrees. “The U.S. is my second home, I adore it.”

We can’t wait. Especially if Shogun explains the definition of some other animal voices.

SLOW PULP
It's October 2020, and Chicago-by-wayof-Wisconsin’s Slow Pulp have released the new LP Movers on Winspear and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Then something interesting happens: a purchase notification from Bandcamp. “When we did our first album in 2020, we got a Bandcamp notification that Ben Gibbard had bought the Movers vinyl,” recalls vocalist-guitarist Emily Massey, who is calling from a retreat working on new music. “We thought it was a joke or someone was playing around somehow. But then we looked at the address and it was, like, going to Seattle and we were like, ‘Maybe it’s real.’ It turned out to be.”

Skip ahead to the end of April 2024 and Slow Pulp will begin their SECOND set of dates with Death Cab for Cutie and Postal Service, playing arenas across the country shortly before heading out for a headlining European tour. That’s not to say you can blame Slow Pulp’s success on the great enunciator himself, but there is something to be said about a vet who still keeps his ear to the ground.

But let’s stay focused. None of this would have happened if Slow Pulp weren’t so great, propelled as they are by pure shoegaze dream pop and Massey’s soft and lilting vocals. She name-checks singers as varied as Emmylou Harris, Shirley Manson (Garbage), Dolores O'Riordan (Cranberries), and Hope Sandoval (Mazzy Star) as influences. And while many of the usual suspects come up as inspiration for guitarist Henry Stoehr, he does list some surprising ones as well. “I think stylistically I like players like Stephen Malkmus or Thurston Moore who are kind of uninhibited,” explains Stoehr pensively. “But this summer I took a course in flat picking. So I am also very much influenced by someone like Doc Watson or some major bluegrass pickers. Sometimes I think I have a disconnect between what I actually play and the kind of guitar music I listen to.”

The sad but hopeful Movers captured the attention of legions in the wake of COVID and days before the election in 2020, leading to underground chatter that more than likely grabbed the attention of Gibbard & Co. And Movers led Slow Pulp to ANTI-, who released Yard late last year. Now with a bigger label behind them, two banger LPs under their belt, and, ya know, an audience that can actually attend their shows, to say Slow Pulp are on the move would be an understatement. “I think we were lucky that we made a sad, introspective record because that was just the mood of that time,” confirms Massey with a bit of a chuckle. “We didn’t get to tour it until November of 2021, so over a year. I think that worked in our favor just because people had time to kind of sit with the record. It was a really pleasant surprise that even a year later the record didn’t feel lost on people and it just kept growing.”

Now with the much-lauded Yard as their priority and in the open, as well as the upcoming arena dates, Slow Pulp get to enjoy the fruits of their labor in a decidedly more normal fashion—you know, the whole record-release-tour cycle. “This time around we're doing the opposite where we tour right after the record is released—or actually maybe we’re doing it right this time,” chuckles Stoehr. “And it’s only been out for a few days and people were singing along to every one of the new songs that were barely even out.” Massey is quick to add that she “fully cried the first show of the tour on stage because I was so overwhelmed by people knowing the songs.”

And now with the band growing by leaps and bounds on the strength of a pair of loved LPs back-toback, some of that introspection that Massey revealed to the world through her lyrics has captured the hearts of many—albeit on an individual basis. “Some people have asked me before if I’m okay with people putting their own meaning onto songs that we’ve written,” states Massey about her lyrics and song ideas. “To me that is the best possible scenario, for it to happen that way. My favorite songs relate so directly to events or things happening in my life that I feel like I’m going through a similar thing as the songwriter. But you’ll never truly know what that is.”

We think we do, and we enjoy every minute of Slow Pulp for it.