Brendan Wells, bassist-vocalist for The Uranium Club, is sitting inside his car outside of the library around the corner from his home, using their Wi-Fi to Zoom chat with Gimmie. It’s October 2023, and it’s exciting times! His band is putting out a new record, Infants Under the Bulb, in 2024, and they’re headed Down Under for the first time ever. We’re chatting with Brendan for a punk book we’ve been working on that will be out soon. He kindly spent two and a half hours chatting; we were nerding out so hard on creativity, punk, and all kinds of stuff that we didn’t even realise the time passing. We started when the sky was light and finished when it was dark. They’re the kind of conversations we love. To celebrate the album, tour, and how much we LOVE Uranium Club, we thought we’d share a little of the chat with you guys early.

BRENDAN WELLS: I had a really cool first experience with punk. I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa. Me and my friend were getting into punk and interested in it; we had gone to the Vans Warped tour. But then we found out that they held local punk shows at the city botanical gardens in the conference rooms. You could rent out a room for the evening. 

Looking back, I’m so impressed by that because it was all just high schoolers: the people taking money at the door, running the show, running the PA, being in attendance, and playing in the bands. That felt so close to where I was or who I was. I was in 8th grade at the time, so probably 13 years old. And these people were between 15 and 18. 

The next week at school, I remember seeing somebody who had played in a band and thinking, ‘Oh my God, there are rock stars that go to my school’ [laughs]. I had never had never felt so close to something like that.

I read a thing from Golnar Nikpour, who was a coordinator at Maximum Rocknroll and who has done bands and zines. It was a conversation about punk. She was talking about being from the suburbs of New York City. She had said, ‘It was two hours away from New York City,’ which to us might have well been a million miles. I never even saw New York City until I was 20-something. When it came to music or punk or anything that I was interested in, it felt a million miles away.

I loved skateboarding. In the skateboarding magazines I would read, everything was coming from San Diego and Los Angeles; California doesn’t look like Iowa. The architecture doesn’t look like Iowa. The weather doesn’t look like Iowa. Finding those local shows was just the first time that it felt like anything close to my reality.

At that local show I went to, the guy that put it on made a CD-R compilation of bands from Iowa. That night I listened to it and it completely blew my mind. It definitely changed my life entirely.

It’s inspiring when you find your local scene and see people your age or slightly older doing all these cool things. I remember when I found my local scene, all ages shows, and local zines covering our scene. It was life-changing. It makes you feel like maybe you can do it too!

BW: In a sense, yeah. Also, in another sense, looking back, I never realised that we were doing those things. Now, listening to stuff where you can hear an interview with somebody from a punk band, they can talk about, ‘Oh, the first bands that I saw were these bands in high school, and we started our band.’ These are bands that we all know about because they have involvement and a legacy or we know of where they’re from. But me and my friends, playing music in our basements, nobody has ever or will ever hear of those bands. 

At the time, I had no thought that we were doing the same thing as other people. It was just what we were doing for fun, like skateboarding, writing graffiti, drawing, or making music. I didn’t feel like there was any connection between that and the rest of the world—that was my mindset at the time.

Now, looking back on it and thinking, ‘Oh, man, of course,’ I grew up to want to be making music and art because that’s what we were doing, even though there was no audience for it, nobody’s watching. We were just like making each other laugh. 

Sometimes when there is no expectations or pressure from outside, I often find with a lot of bands, they have some really great records, and then people start caring about them and something happens and their output isn’t as great. Maybe it’s me, maybe my tastes change? Maybe I want something more or fresh. I don’t know. I always wondered why that’s often the case with bands.

BW: Yeah, I’ve wondered that as well. There definitely is a pressure to perform, and even though it goes against sense to say, ‘Okay, people are interested in what we’re doing, so we should…’, you try to figure out what they want and give it to them instead of understanding that they already like what we’re doing. That’s come up in my mind a lot for sure.

A place that’s brought me to, is to think a lot about limitations. A lot of us have the idea of perfection and we want perfection, but what we end up doing or what we end up having is our version of trying to do that. 

Or like people get into vintage drum machines, so they can look up and find out what drum machines were used on what songs by Suicide and then if they have enough money, they can look on the internet and buy that exact thing. Then you make a song wth it, and great, your song sounds like Suicide. Buy what if you want to sound like Suicide but all your have is a Casio keyboard or something inexpensive, just what you have available and within your mean? Then you’re going to get something that’s going to be a unique thing based on what you’re lacking, basically; it starts to sound different, though. The things that your limited by is where the voice comes from. That kind of thing has been on my mind a lot lately.

I’m always thinking deeply about stuff and why stuff is the way it is. I always have a million questions.

BW: Absolutely. II feel that same way as well. Recently, I’ve tried to pinpoint that as the idea of curiosity and not losing your curiosity. As I get older, I think because I’ve experienced something like this before, that I know everything or that I’ve got it all figured out, but it’s always good to keep learning. Curiosity always surprises me. I hold on to, and I’m incredibly grateful for, curiosity.

I’m endlessly interested in the process of creation.

BW: I’m interested in the creation, inspirations, and motivations, even more so than the physical product that comes at the end, like the process. I think you can learn so much about yourself in the process of making things, and a lot about the world and how you wear your place in the world. And in interacting with other people, especially being in a band, that’s definitely where my connections with other people come from. Relationships that are based on, we both like the same sound of music, that’s a great thing to be able to connect on. Especially when before you didn’t have that.

My favourite kind of creators are ones that are truly original, like DEVO. We’ll be seeing them soon. Last time I had the chance to see them, I was having a little bit too much of a good time and didn’t really appreciate them. 

BW: Oh man. So this time you finally get to see them! I got to see them in 2012. It was in Des Moines, the city where I grew up, which is an hour and a half drive from Iowa City; a college town with a history of hippie academics and that kind of culture. Then in Des Moines, the show was outdoors on a bridge in the middle of downtown. A lot of people showed up with their own lawn chairs and sat to watch! It was one of those situations where you could just walk up to the front guardrail in front of the stage, there was no fighting to get there. It was an experience. They were amazing.

They’re playing at a theatre, near my work. I work in a library. 

BW: Cool! 

I know you used to work in libraries as well!

BW: I did! 

I love working in libraries because it’s a community-based place and people come there to get knowledge about all kinds of things. It means a lot to me to work in a community space rather than for a big soulless corporation.

BW: Oh yeah, absolutely. Working there was like a way to experience and learn about community outside of punk, which was very eye-opening for me. In my early 20s, and to have decided the only place in society that’s worth anything is in the punk community and being in the punk community, but then I met people who I identified with outside of punk. Working at the library and seeing how it serves people and helps people, and they weren’t even punk! [laughs]. Libraries are amazing institutions. I worked at the library between two and three years, shelving books, sitting at the front desk, helping people print.

I was at the main downtown branch of our library last week to pick up some books of record covers, specifically this book about the design group Hipgnosis, who did Pink Floyd and stuff, looking for inspiration for the new Uranium Club album cover. This little section, these books, made me so excited and interested to wanna get back to library work. Being somebody who shelved books, I could check them out and saw so many exciting interesting things. Being in that environment is very inspiring.

I’m excited Uranium Club have a new album coming out!

BW: I feel like it’s incredibly lucky, and I’m so happy that Uranium Club has been a band for almost 10 years now! I feel like bands can break up at any time. I feel incredibly lucky for being a DIY effort the whole time. I’m very, very excited for a new record. Yeah, it’ll be out in February. We’re playing Australia! I’ve been trying to get the band to go to Australia almost the entire time that we’ve been a band. That’s been my goal as a musician for the longest time.

When we had one record out, we played with Ausmuteants here in Minneapolis. That was when I first started trying to make it happen, talking to Jake Robertson about it. It really seemed like it would happen but then the pandemic got in the way. Now, Jack from Vintage Crop reached out to us. We thought it’d be great to have a record out on an Australian label for the tour. It’s great working with Billy from Anti Fade.

We love Billy! All the cool stuff his label has been putting out forever was a big inspiration for starting Gimmie.

That’s cool. I’m very excited for Australia! For the longest time, a lot of my favourite bands have been from Australia—so feels like a magical place. 

We have the some of the best bands in the world! It’s so great that we’re here in the middle of it all, on the ground, and get to really document it—it’s our community. We value being a part of it so much. The world is so inserted in what’s happening here.

I hope the record store’s not closed, I’m going straight over there to get a copy of Gimmie. I can’t wait for Australia! See you soon.

The Uranium Club’s new album Infants Under the Bulb is out through Anti Fade Records – pre-order it HERE. Check out all the other cool stuff Brendan does HERE. Don’t miss the Australian shows!