Send "Underworld " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 It's a little ironic that, while Underworld's mid-to-late-1990s albums have aged extraordinarily well, the band itself hasn't. They lost Darren Emerson to globetrotting, Ibiza-rocking DJ glory at the beginning of the decade and they haven't quite found their stride in the two (now three) albums since. This was perhaps inevitable: Karl Hyde's wild-eyed, front-of-the-mix personality always ensured that Underworld would age more like a rock band than an electronic act. (Witness how a touch of gray has bolstered the wisdom of folks like Carl Craig and the Chemical Brothers.)My favorite song on Barking, "Diamond Jigsaw", talks about a white stretch limo and features "pre-mi-um te-qui-la" prominently in its chorus. It sounds cheesy, but it's fantastic: the world absolutely needs more songs about those nights when you're flush with cash and having a really good time. Moreover, Underworld is exactly the type of band to write these songs, because aside from aging like rock stars, they also got rich like rock stars. There are worse places to end up than "thoughtfully content headliners," and a recent, leaked live set/mix from the Privilege club in Ibiza proves that they can still transform their mid-level angst into thumping party-starters. Barking doesn't contain nearly enough of these moments, but the ones it does contain feature the kind of backlit, uplifting anthem-making that Underworld have only occasionally dabbled in (think: "Rez" or, more recently, "Two Months Off"). It's a really good fit for the band. On "Scribble", Hyde sounds reconciled: "And it's okay/ You give me everything I need." The arrangement is bright and lithe. It features the same rush-rush-rush drum programming of heyday Underworld, but it doesn't feel like the song is trying slap you in the face; it feels like it's trying to make you drive your car a little faster. It's refreshing to listen to Underworld embrace small, personal thrills....full text |
| Nme |
| In the ’90s, everyone loved Underworld and feared the millennium bug. Hence, it makes odd sense that the band has been misfiring consistently since 1999’s ‘Beaucoup Fish’. With ‘Barking’, they manage to spark into life just twice. ‘Bird 1’ and ‘Move In Water’ are, in the vein of classic Underworld, simultaneously danceable and menacingly strange. Elsewhere, though, this collaboration-heavy eighth album tends to fail when it experiments: ‘Louisiana’ is a tediously mournful love song, and ‘Diamond Jigsaw’ a baffling Doves-style stadium-indie anthem. Elsewhere, there are time-warping forays into bland house, formulaic drum’n’bass and (shudder) chill-out music. Remember that? No? Good. Niall O’Keeffe Click here to get your copy of Underworld's 'Barking' from Rough Trade Shops....full text |
| Residentadvisor |
| Too often "return to form" means that a flailing act has finally made another good album, but I like what Underworld did with Oblivion with Bells. That uncharacteristically sombre, inward-looking album was markedly different in tone from both the band's classic "MkII" work and A Hundred Days Off, their superb opening bow as a duo after Darren Emerson left; it was an experiment that worked. Barking, then, is a return to form not because it's the best album Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have put out in a while (and it is), but because this record sees the duo returning to the more beat-intensive, complicatedly beatific realm of everything from "Pearl's Girl" to "Two Months Off." In some ways Barking also marks a departure for the band, and not just because the album could fit on a single LP, or because eight of these nine tracks see Hyde and Smith employing other acts for additional production. Like Hot Chip's underrated One Life Stand, Barking marries a renewed emphasis on the dance floor with unabashedly open-hearted lyrics; with their combination of ebullient refrains and bright, bursting music "Always Loved a Film," "Scribble," "Between Stars," and "Diamond Jigsaw" could all vie for the most straightforwardly joyous Underworld song we've heard in a long time. As always, Underworld make perfect music for travelling—if you're somewhere you can't dance, you should at least be in a car or train or bus, anything moving forward and fast. But Barking doesn't work at just one speed; the slightly more subdued "Grace" and "Moon in Water" (which sounds like a version of Eno's "Bone Bomb" that's simultaneously calmer and more kicking) provide some needed breathers, and the slowly building, impressionistic "Bird 1" ("a moped started up / sounding like a chainsaw / of tiny firecrackers" is my favourite bit of scene-setting in ages) and movingly wracked, trembling ballad "Louisiana" ease the listener into and out of the album gently. The only real misstep is the essentially instrumental "Hamburg Hotel," which isn't bad, just unnecessary. On one of Underworld's marathon albums it might have been a welcome detour, but with the rest of Barking packed so explosively tight it's just in the way....full text |
Underworld lyrics
