No. 02 Underworld – Everything Everything

Crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy,crazy….

Orbital may have been the act that got me into dance music, but Everything Everything is the album that kicked in the door, gave me a big hug, made sure I was sorted, and then dragged me grinning onto the dancefloor.

Well…. That’s a great story, but not quite true. Back in the year 2000, I was getting into dance music, but it was strictly bangers only. Dance music had to be 140 BMP plus and/or evil. I had no time for anything else, I used to skip any slow songs. (Unless it was very early in the morning, then those slow tracks would hit hard. For reasons…..) But Underworld would be the ones to change this misguided idea.

It’s a rare live album that actually conveys the excitement of a band’s live show. It’s either been overdubbed into sterility, badly recorded, or the band just doesn’t work without the PA level volume of the live experience. Everything Everything has none of those issues. There might still be some rock bores who will sniff and point out that no one is playing any live instruments. (Karl is playing guitar on at least one track) but it misses the point. These are reworked tracks for the live setting and they are pure fire.

The album starts with the slow burn of Juanita and Cups, which simmer and build until Push Upstairs drives up the intensity and the BPM. Now we’re in. It’s tops off and heads down for the rest of the album. People, we are not fucking around.

I could just list all the tracks and point to them as yell SEE?!? But that’s not very constructive and a poor way to make my point. So let’s just highlight just how good this version of Pearl’s Girl is. Also, the speeded up version of King of Snake is a crowd pleasing, weapons grade dance banger that channels I Feel Love for Y2K. I mean, this record is so good that Born Slippy is just another song on here, better than some tracks, but not the best. That honour goes to the closer.

Rez/Cowgirl is possibly the best thing to ever happen to music. I’m not exaggerating here, I mean that literally. How many people have stood in front of an orchestra playing Mozart and hugged their friends and told them they loved them? I’m sure that’s a vanishingly small number, but it’s not with Rez/Cowgirl. The tease of Rez morphing into Cowgirl, the false drop and the complete euphoria of this song. The wide eyed, grinning joy it imparts is giving me goosebumps even just typing this.

And while Rez/Cowgirl may be one of the best closers of all time, the DVD version has a jaw dropping version of Moaner on it that didn’t fit on the CD. If you haven’t heard it, I’ve linked it below. Easily the hardest song the band has written and still one of the best.

This CD is the soundtrack to my life in the 2000’s, and it will always remind me of my years in Dublin and the friends I still have, but are on the other side of the sea. It reminds me of festivals and wide eyed smiles and that crazed energy of my twenties. Everything Everything is a time capsule of my youth, a shibboleth for new friends, and on top of that, a collection of some of the greatest dance music ever written.