Oblivion with Bells

by

Underworld

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Now don't get me wrong. I love this band. In fact I flew to New York a few weeks ago see them live as they only played a few dates in the US. I spent hundreds on airfare and hotels and such to finally see one of their legendary live sets. They were my second to last "holy grail" of bands that I need to see live. Now I only need to see Kraftwerk in concert and I'll be happy.

And they did not disappoint at all. It was awesome. They played nearly all the songs I wanted to hear. I was able to get this album a bit early because I pre-ordered it from a link they showed on screen after the show. And I got a cool T-Shirt to boot. Needless to say, I am a fan and I was super super excited to get this one.

But Oblivion With Bells is a departure for Underworld. It is "slooww" to say the least. I actually fast forwarded through tracks, which I would have never guessed me ever doing. Virtually nothing happens on tracks 8,9, and 10. Seriously, nothing. Thankfully a "token" beat comes in for the last track. I have since gone back and listened a couple more times since. And it has grown on me. But there are few beats to be heard on this record.

This is the album I would have expected Smith and Hyde to make after Darren Emerson departed. But with A Hundred days Off they kept the energy going from Beaucoup Fish and Second Toughest. It still had some fast, mean tracks like Dinosaur Adventure 3D.

But Oblivion is slowed down. Way down. Don't be fooled by Crocodiles. It is the non representative single. And it flows right into Beautiful Burnout nicely. But the beats and hooks are quite minimal. Almost like loops for Hyde to speak over. Nothing terribly innovative really.

Oblivion has nice sounds, great production and the expected stream of conscious Karl Hyde lyrics. In fact his lyrics are brought to the forefront like never before. Very much the focus of the songs this time around. And you can make them all out this time around.

But there are no break beat-ish tracks like Pearls Girl or Something Like A Mama on this. No ten minute build up tracks like Born Slippy/NUXX or Cups. Certainly no Cowgirl on this one. But hey, that's cool. Some of those tracks are over a decade old. Cowgirl is nearly 15 years old now (wow). We can't expect the same thing over and over from these guys. But just so you know, think Push Downstairs, not Push Upstairs for this record.

If you kept up with the River Run series, this has more in common with the third release.....slow building, even a bit dull but still Underworld.

Pick it up because you love Underworld. But expect something different.

There's a misconception going around, in the critics' reviews of Oblivion With Bells, that Karl Hyde's lyrics have always been "nonsensical," "stream-of-consciousness," "freestyle slam poetry" and so forth. Let's set the record straight on that. If you go back to Underworld's first album in 1993, you'll find that Hyde's writing used to be full of descriptive and foreboding imagery. Nearly every song had sensual, suggestive lyrics, like the opening couplet "thunder thunder lightning ahead / kiss you kiss you dark and long." After that album, Hyde did take a turn for the nonsensical, but he could still occasionally come up with a vivid image, like "cats are gathering outside your window / homeless strays, bootleg babies / call to you lying among the mosquitoes / that summer's fever's coming" on the second album, or "Tina lives in Berlin / her voice so seldom on my machine / I feel the noise when I'm on the market" on the third.

Let's also note that the problem isn't that Underworld make too few "bangers" and too many "chill-out tracks," or the other way around -- the problem is that it's now possible to even classify their music in this manner. Again, this was not always the case. Nearly everything they recorded between 1992 and 1994 defies categorization. If you can find it, listen to "Jam Scraper," a rare reworking of their early single "MMM Skyscraper I Love You." It begins with slow, echoing guitars and gentle keyboard textures, then builds up to a terrific acid breakdown, which then gradually recedes into a calm ending. But it wasn't just that one track -- everything they made at that time had some kind of huge crescendo or unexpected shift. Even later on, it happened sometimes. "Banstyle / Sappys Curry" on their second album changes midway into an affecting, moody section built on a Spanish guitar, the most atypical musical work in all of techno. Electronic music still, to this day, hasn't fully absorbed Underworld's early work, perhaps because a lot of it is scattered around as B-sides and rarities (e.g. "Dirty Guitar," "Minneapolis," "Jam Scraper," "Why Why Why?").

But now? Yeah, now Hyde's lyrics really are nonsensical. Typical lines from this album: "Faxed invitation to oblivion with bells / Technicolour delights, someone pushing" and "bouncing, bouncing, is it playtown? / roll the ball, the blue slush cup." There's no central mood or theme. When this happened on previous albums, Hyde's vocals were distorted or hushed in the mix so that the meaningless words were unintelligible and the focus was only on his tone. But here, his voice is front and centre, and he doesn't have a tone, he just flatly recites these lines. Even in the songs where there might be some noteworthy music, like the clanging rhythm in "Ring Road," Hyde hogs the spotlight and yammers away about whatever.

Musically, the album tries to recall the melancholy of Underworld's early work. There are no major-key "bangers" like "Two Months Off" or "King of Snake." But the greater introspection comes filtered through the exact same style as 2002's A Hundred Days Off -- a few up-tempo tracks like "Mo Move" and "Luetin" with a few ambient instrumentals interspersed throughout. "Crocodile" starts with a fanfare heavily reminiscent of "Rowla" from 1996, but then it basically reuses the same up-tempo percussion-keyboard rhythm section used in "Mo Move."

Track for track, Oblivion With Bells is better than A Hundred Days Off, in that it doesn't have anything as inane as "Twist" or "Little Speaker." In particular, the instrumentals "To Heal" and "Glam Bucket" are very pretty. But there's not much motion on the album -- the songs are clearly separated into "ambient" and "dance" templates, and each song strictly follows its template. There isn't a single crescendo to be found. Furthermore, there are no surprises. "Dark And Long" wasn't just carried by its production and main rhythm, it also had a lot of sudden, brilliant hooks, like the additional percussion rhythm that ended the song, or the abrupt break in the middle where Hyde intoned, "Screaming into the eye of the lens." Oblivion With Bells has nothing like this. The only time when there's some kind of shift is when "Boy Boy Boy" brings in sudden drums over the ambient opening, and it immediately becomes one of the album's highlights.

There are only two times on this whole album where Underworld approach the kinds of feelings they used to evoke in every track they laid down. In "Crocodile," after the second verse, there is a sudden vocal line, in a slightly higher key than the "normal" chorus, distorted to sound like some kind of choral chant in a cathedral. And then after that there's a break in which the bass and keyboard textures come to the forefront. This is the best idea they've had in a decade. The second time is in the last song, "Best Mamgu Ever," where Hyde's voice is chopped up into incomprehensible pieces and the song lopes on in a gentle groove with a low-key guitar line, until suddenly, a sighing voice rises from the background, singing something soulful yet still unintelligible.

You'll note that both of those times, Hyde's voice is not the focus. Then it becomes clear that this should have been an instrumental album. Imagine if all of "Crocodile" sounded like that bizarre cathedral choir, or if the ambient parts were mixed into the middle of the other tracks rather than separated. That's what they should do -- Hyde has run his writing style into the ground, it's time to reinvent Underworld again as electronic sound collage. But they're still beholden to the style of Beaucoup Fish and A Hundred Days Off, so Oblivion With Bells turns out inconsistent and disappointing.