Underworld, Beaucoup Fish

When I originally compiled this list, I chose dubnobasswithmyheadman, the group�s decade-old debut. And it�s a damn fine album; I bought it while working at camp seven years ago and listened to it every night in its entirety, huddled in my staff cabin. Their second album, Second Toughest In The Infants, was my introduction to the group in 1996 after I�d heard the ubiquitous �Born Slippy�. That album is like an epic nightmare of fiendishly sharp electronica, and could�ve just as easily ended up here. So how did I finally arrive at Beaucoup Fish? After all, it�s almost universally regarded as the group�s weakest effort. For me to annoint it here will no doubt cause a veritable tsunami in my readership of thousands; electrogeeks everywhere will be up in arms. (I can already hear Dave McClelland calling me up in the middle of the night in a rage and screaming at me, but then, he has anger management issues and has always been a bit of a loose cannon.)

No, I probably chose Beaucoup Fish because it has my favorite Underworld song, �Jumbo� (narrowly edging out �Dirty Epic�) and because I think my experience with it was the most varied, most complete of any Underworld album. I graduated from college, broke up with a girlfriend, recorded an album, became a teacher, and moved three times while still fully in this album�s thrall. Perhaps it had a little help from its live successor, Everything Everything, which somehow managed to amplify already-majestic compositions like �Jumbo� and �King Of Snake� along with other high points from the group�s catalog. In any event, �Jumbo� is probably the most nakedly emotional Karl Hyde has ever allowed his music, or lyrics, to get, and in doing so he created the most tasteful, palpable pop song in all of electronica.

This is what I listened to in 1999 while moving out of my dorm room and vacating the fairweather campus where I�d spent the previous four years. Then, throughout sweltering Iowa City summer and a surreal post-graduate year in my hometown, during which I took refuge in the strange, ambient confessional �Skym� and the bombastic �Bruce Lee�, and went to college parties where I heard �Kittens� and �Push Upstairs�. There was something about Beaucoup Fish that married the tender atmospheres of dubnobasswithmyheadman and the metallic sleekness of Second Toughest In The Infants, and it resulted in an futuristic urban narrative about alienation and its antidote. Underworld is more playful and poppy than ever before on this album, but I don�t think they compromise any of their patented formula for easy hooks. �Cups� is an awfully sprawling way to open an album, but it provides a gentle descent into the world that the group has carefully, and lovingly, constructed for the listener. And the thing is, I didn�t really appreciate �Cups� until I heard it on drugs.

That�s right, I just said that. I�m going to be That Guy for a moment. Several years ago a bunch of us were in a house in Grinnell and a large supply of mushrooms appeared almost from out of nowhere, and we locked ourselves inside and went to work, and at one point I went into Mark�s room and put on his expensive headphones and laid on the bed and stared at the latticework of Christmas lights he�d hung from the ceiling and in my head it took me three hours to listen to that single eleven-minute track. When I finally emerged from the room, someone asked me where the hell I�d been all that time, as if the song had caused the whole house to feel that expansion of time, and I just said, �Listening to Underworld!� and everyone immediately understood.

But really, it all comes back to �Jumbo�. I�m sorry, it just does. Grab some headphones and go jogging around the edge of a small Iowa town during a full moon in September while you listen to this song, and you�ll understand. Get the live DVD the film that accompanies the song. Listen to it while you�re in a jet circling Heathrow at three in the morning. Conduct a long-distance relationship over the telephone. Or don�t. I don�t know. But to anyone who accuses electronica of being cold and devoid of personality or emotion, I submit Underworld, and especially this song. You don�t even have to be on drugs.

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