Underworld: A Hundred Days Off : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Most dance music is about doing the wild thing, but Underworld songs aren't about sex so much as unrequited, frustrated, information-age lust. With the elegant, troubled throb of A Hundred Days Off, singer Karl Hyde and producer Rick Smith suggest that a crowded discothque can be a very lonely place. Like most of the album, the sweeping, thunderous "Two Months Off" swells up but never quite relents or relaxes. Hundred bears the traces of a band that is taking stock, and no wonder: This is Underworld's first record after the departure of DJ-producer Darren Emerson. But even without him, Underworld still nail a groove and then just sit on it forever. During its eight and a half minutes, the glimmering, twitching "Little Speaker" shifts and grows and entrances, as the rain-streaked melody fades in and out like a bad dream. "Twist" is a few moody chords, some jazzy cymbals and a melodic sub-bass line that recalls the band's musical roots in English acid house.

Like Roxy Music, R.E.M. and other very adult bands of days past, Underworld sound like they've been to art school -- but don't hold that against them. "Trim" is driven by a stream-of-consciousness vocal from Hyde that, for better or worse, recalls vintage Michael Stipe, but the track's restless, prickly melody isn't spooky so much as it is haunted. The beauty of A Hundred Days Off is that it pumps and churns so suggestively; it somehow evokes the blues of the otherwise successful modern man, who goes out every night and dances alone in his head.

TOM MOON
(RS 907 - October 17, 2002)