Here's a brief biography of Underworld.
Rick Smith and Karl Hyde come together in the early '80s as Freur, a New Wave band. They fail to make the slightest dent on the music world. After disbanding, they reunite as Underworld in 1988 and suffer the same fate.
Enter Darren Emerson, a young British DJ that Smith and Hyde have recruited to rejuvenate their failing careers. Emerson not only brings the band to life, but is the force behind "Dubnobasswithmyheadman," a defining album of the dance genre.
Emerson gives Underworld its lifeforce in the "choose life" anthem of "Trainspotting" ("Born Slippy") and albums that follow "Dub," culminating with the brilliant abrasiveness of 1999's "Beaucoup Fish." In 2000, Emerson leaves the band, and Underworld's fate seems clear.
Fortunately for the band, its story is as intriguing and complicated as its music.
Although Emerson undoubtedly was a large contributing force in past Underworld work, Hyde and Smith abandon their recent trend of increasing pulse, intensity and passion for a more mellow, but equally engaging work aptly entitled "A Hundred Days Off," which certainly reflects a latitude change.
In some respects, "Days" is much like early Underworld records, but more of an Underworld-lite.
Emerson's departure has let the band take it down a notch, even producing tracks like "Sola Sistim," which borders on bluesy soul. The progressive punch of tracks like "Moaner" on "Beaucoup" has been replaced in favor of a more placid and more delicate touch, especially reflected in "Ess Gee," a pseudo-lullaby that certainly begs the question whether Emerson truly was the one that got Underworld off their feet.
"Ess Gee," a step into the realm of pacifying Neo-New Age, lacks the energy or support to keep it alive and the elegance to keep anyone's attention.
The highlights of the album beg to differ. Classic Underworld, a formula that has in the past transcended trends and seems as modern today as it was in 1993, is applied to the second track, "Two Months Off."
The track is the dazzling but simultaneously sensual, club-ready first single, a stunning compilation and complication of loops and lyrics with a solitary fault, failing to fit into the scheme of the rest of the album.
Although "Dinosaur Adventure 3D" attempts to keep the same pace later in the album, its headache-inducing throb is for naught, not only unable to take off into the upper stratosphere of big beat bliss, but also unable to make it off the runway.
What does allow the tracks to soar, the secret weapon and mesh, has always been the band's percussion, so often the most overlooked element of their work.
Like past albums, the drums remain subtle and understated, but are in fact what gives Underworld its strangely unexplainable distinction from the rest of the field. Even at their clamoring loudest, Hyde and Smith masterfully keep them at arm's length, layering them with pervading synth, and more increasingly, Hyde's stream of consciousness ramblings. "Trim," an odd, acoustic guitar-driven delicacy, is a particular example of this knack for keeping a sense of perfect equilibrium.
"Days" isn't Underworld's finest work, most original work, or most interesting work. It isn't going to revamp the structure of modern dance music or win any converts for the genre.
Its flailing from the substance that created the band to what it is now fails to answer pertinent questions about the band's more distant future sans Emerson.
What "Days" is, however, is the statement that Underworld needed not only to prove its vitality, but that it deserves, at least for the time being, to stay in music's elite.
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