Underworld, Barbara Barbara: 'Revitalised techno heroes let in the light on a forward-thinking return', album review

The welcome return of Underworld to something like their best is the result of five years of diverse work, which has at times seemed to draw them away from themselves.

The journey has encompassed, since 2010’s Barking, not just Karl Hyde’s brace of albums with Brian Eno, but also the industrial-folk soundtrack for Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein, and, famously, their work on the same director’s staging of the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, for which Rick Smith was musical director.

The prospect of another Underworld album seemed to be receding into the distance as the duo’s muses were engaged elsewhere, mostly in the service of others’ guiding visions.

Then, two years ago, Hyde and Smith re-convened for a series of shows celebrating the 20th anniversary of Dubnobasswithmyheadman, their breakthrough 1994 album, which still offers the most invigorating nostalgic whiff of Nineties’ rave culture.

It certainly invigorated them, the re-connection with its imaginative dance-pop soundscaping sending the duo back to their Essex studio, revitalised.

That inspiration comes across most clearly in the opening “I Exhale”, which can be interpreted as an impressionistic love letter to those ravey days.

Over a loping beat and two-note bassline swathed in relaxed surges of fizzing synth, Karl Hyde’s characteristic found-phrase lyric about “asbestos rooms, corrugated rhythms… smash it up, get it down you, do as much as you can, step out fresh” vividly depicts those loved-up all-nighters, the track developing a subtle momentum over eight minutes until dawn breaks as the end nears, with “a white glow on the horizon”.

It’s beautiful and warm, more poignant than nostalgic, and it heralds an album on which that pioneer spirit drives Underworld’s best music in years. A shuffle-twitch techno groove, “If Rah” starts with possibly Hyde’s most ridiculous opening gambit – “The origin of numbers is a questionable hypothesis” – leading into another fragmentary lyric with touches of Mark E Smith about it.

But then the track starts to blossom, with emotive organ chords and syncopated piano figure accompanying a chant of “lunar, lunar, lunar”, which, perhaps pointedly, echoes the “lager, lager, lager” catchphrase that established Underworld’s reputation (and fortune). But this time, they’re looking at the sky, not the gutter.

“Low Burn” rides a four-on-the-floor beat, with blurry keyboard swirl, before the snare cross-rhythm gallops in; Hyde’s semi-audible vocal hoves into earshot as synthesised strings and French horns drape a cinematic backdrop over the groove.

Then, at the mid-point, the band play their joker with “Santiago Cuatro”, with the small Mexican guitar of the title inscribing cyclical figures over a low electronic hum. It’s disarmingly open, a simple but moving counterweight to the physically animated music around it.

It leaves one open to the subtle charms of “Motorhome”, a slower, more comforting groove, where Hyde advises, “Don’t let it drag you down/ Keep away from the dark side.”

That could stand as a motto for the album: this is music seeking to let in the light, from the “white glow” of sunrise in “I Exhale”, to the “lunar” moonlight of “If Rah”, to the classic Underworld hands-in-the-air moment halfway through the closing “Nylon Strung”, when the counterpoint melody sweeps in like a 1,000-watt floodlight.

It’s a wave of gleaming optimism that brings home the sentiment behind the album title: a shining future, indeed.