Originally
published on isnotwas.com
Underworld’s debut as an
‘80s rock band was less than auspicious. I was a pimply
teenager when the single from their album “Underneath the
Radar” blipped on my screen; it pretty much missed the music
charts altogether. A second, weaker album followed.
Then Darren Emerson arrived on the scene.
Karl Hyde has said in interviews that the band was dabbling in
dance before Emerson came along, but didn’t release any
of the music as Underworld. As far as many fans are concerned,
though, Emerson was responsible for their new sound. In 1994 the
boys released Dubnobasswithmyhead, a groundbreaking fusion of
rock and dance music, arriving in the form of a dense noirish
soundscape that demanded to be listened to as an album, not individually
as singles. Their follow-up albums Secondtoughestintheinfants
and Beaucoup Fish established Underworld as the most creative
and popular dance band on the planet. Then earlier this year,
Emerson split.
So Underworld Phase 2—the bloody great
dance band years—has come to a close. Or has it? The first
post-Emerson single “8 Ball” debuted on The Beach
soundtrack and arguably retains much of the Phase 2 Underworld
sound, though it does come across as more minimalistic. Hyde has
said that the band has always changed and would have continued
to change anyway. In reaction to constant speculation about the
new Underworld sound, he even joked recently that Underworld was
going folk-acoustic. So. Who knows what’s next.
Never mind. In the meantime, the dynamic
trio has offered up a capstone to nearly a decade of the Underworld
dance sound. Everything, Everything neatly encapsulates the three
Emerson-era albums (plus Born Slippy NUXX which was only released
as a single), carefully extracting songs from each album, though
pulling heavily—half the songs—from the recent one,
Beaucoup Fish. They’ve got enough good material to press
2 or 3 live CDs, but I ain’t complaining.
In fashioning this disc, Underworld have
completed a blueprint that any dance band striving to make an
exceptional recording should follow. They’ve successfully
recreated their manic studio concoctions live, nonetheless imbuing
each song with soul. Dance bands aren’t supposed to put
out live albums this good.
The disc opens with the 12-and-a-half minute
opus “Juanita/Kiteless” and its tender vocoded refrain,
“Your rails. You’re thin. Your thin paper wings.”
The song shimmies and builds to a shuddering electronic climax.
From there they segue into a Cliff’s Notes version of the
babbling, beautiful “Cups” with some of my favorite
parts unfortunately left off. Then the crowd erupts as the psycho
stabbing piano riff signifies the beginning of “Push Upstairs,”
a 7:28 version of the song, which originally was short enough
for radio play.
If there were any doubt whether Karl Hyde
could replicate his frenzied stream-of-conscious glossolalia live,
well, yes, he can. Sounding like some sorta tripped-out 21st Century
beat poet, he pulls off the staccato lyrics of both “Pearls
Girl” and “Born Slippy” with ease. Replete with
Armageddon Chopper beats and “crazy, crazy” abandon,
the driving, shimmering version of “Pearl’s Girl”
washes over you for more than eight minutes. “Born Slippy”
unwinds casually at first, the vocals starting three minutes in;
then it really gets to whirring viciously along before ending
with soft, choir-like strains.
The tinkly sad song “Jumbo”
is as hymn-like here as the original is, and perhaps even more
stately. I do miss the dialogue snippets—you know about
vests on sale at Wal-Mart and fishing at Reverend Lake: I’m
a sucker for that kinda shit. After “Jumbo” eases
out, “Shudder/King of Snake” hatches into life. The
crowd positively roars as the bass line kicks in, and it’s
a decent track, though it’s the one song on here that hardly
varies from its album version.
“Rez/Cowgirl” rounds out this
hour-plus concert with Hyde chanting, “I’m invisible”
over a sample of the “everything, everything” mantra
the album’s named after. Underworld really know how to whip
a crowd about, and the song stops and starts in all the right
places, the requisite beats and squawks entering and colliding
in perfect timing. Then the song gradually coughs and splutters
to a close. And that’s all the Underworld we get for now.
Overall, Rick Smith and Mike Nielsen have
merged the band’s appearances at Belgium’s Vorst National
and Holland’s Pinkpop Festival to great effect, creating
a fluid listening experience. Fans will be relieved to know most
of the songs aren’t carbon-copy recreations either: Underworld
is jamming.
Also not to be missed: Everything, Everything,
the DVD the CD is based on: you get live concert footage, outtakes,
graphical video produced by Tomato (the creative collective Underworld
belongs to) which can be watched over the music instead of the
concert video footage, and sundry other interactive gewgaws for
your DVD player and PC.
Damn. Now I gotta go buy a DVD
player.
9/10
Robert Stribley
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