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You know what the best thing is about Underworld? - and believe me, your chances of creating a short-list of their many attributes are slimmer than an Aussie admitting the Wallabies weren’t good enough - it’s the fact that no two shows are the same. This may seem like a mute point, but when you consider the rigidity of the indie bands repetitious 10 track/3 track-encore for the whole tour (there are few exceptions), the uniqueness of the Underworld experience is given some perspective.
Tonight is not sold out by any stretch of the imagination and the audience is more Pulp-generation than Kanye West, but this more due to Underworld performing out of the limelight for the past half-decade rather than anything more convolute. They set their stall out right in the middle of the road by opening with ‘Dark Train’, preceded by a poem about Birmingham, before running straight into the timeless ‘Cowgirl/Rez.’ Who gives a fuck that it’s Tuesday night? Old proceeds new as ‘Crocodile’ runs into ‘King of Snake’ and ‘Glam Bucket’ sets up ‘Two Months Off’ before a mouth-watering ‘Beautiful Burnout.’
The twelve minute version of ‘BB’ is a highlight in a set of highlights and is only just topped in stunning elegance by set-clincher ‘Jumbo.’ The finale is made all the more momentous by the rainbowed inflatables that eclipse the stage, for Underworld are as much a visual entity as a musical one; something the band have always said they see as the same thing. The set is illustrated on the big screen not by dead rock stars or repeats of videos but by sub-titled short films and artful montages that run in tandem to beat and melody.
The scrumptiously stomping ‘Kittens’ took tonight’s performance into the Champions League, with Smith, Price and Hyde leading their disciples in a march to the Promised Land. A mere album track from 1999’s ‘Beaucoup Fish,’ ‘Kittens’ sums up the Underworld live experience. Not content to churn out the singles, Romford’s finest remind us that there is no such thing as an album filler on an Underworld LP.
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