Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future represents just one of the many signs of the graceful aging of dance music. It’s not a classic by any standards, and it certainly isn’t a milestone in Underworld’s glittering career. That this is completely integrated into the history of “dance” music (conceived rather broadly) is their gift and their curse. They occupy an undecidable position in which the various subgenres emanating from dance and electronica (techno, progressive house, whatever) enter into a set of non-synchronous relations with one another, and it has always been all the better for it. They’re a “fusion” band, a “crossover” act: none of the above, and yet all of the above at the same time. It is, therefore, reductive to call Barbara Barbara a “dance” record. If we can do this at all, we can certainly describe it as a “grown up” one. It also, conveniently, allows us to construct a semi-coherent narrative about the band’s production and reproduction of a genre.
Obviously, it’s almost impossible to provide a neutral, objective account of this history. An account will always include the self-mythologizing narratives told by its participants (producers, DJs, ravers, critics, consumers). However, at least in UK dance music, two tropes have clearly emerged. On the one hand, there’s a story recounted by those original participants, eyes glistening with nostalgia, about the “early days” of dancing until dawn in the muddy fields of London’s commuter belt, leading up to those about the coupling of sun-kissed bodies on the terraces of Ibizan clubland. On the other hand, we end up in the mid-2010s with them lecturing us on how much fun they had and how lame we are by comparison. Both of these stories run into contradiction when we take into consideration the broad-based institutionalization of rave (superclubs) and the saturation of its techniques in the production of pop music. Of course, they were all probably too eckied at the time to tell this story coherently, and we weren’t there, so we have no idea what we’re talking about anyway. It’s unclear where Barbara Barbara fits in here. It’s a settled, domestic, respectably middle-class dance record.
Barbara Barbara is seven tracks long, a length that grants it a sort of “boutiquey” status nowadays. It’s a suitable structure that cleverly inverts the familiar build-release structure of both individual tracks and DJ sets, beginning with three big club bangers (“I Exhale,” “If Rah,” and “Low Burn”), rather than slapping them in the middle of the record, before following it up with flamenco-lite (“Santiago Cuatra”) and an electro-ballad (“Motorhome”). There’s nothing here to push us out of our comfort zones, and they don’t sound like they’re out of theirs either. But nor do they rely on established formulas, so they’re not treading water. “If Rah” and “Low Burn” both recall peak Underworld bangers, but neither of them repeat their earlier work nor resort to updating old motifs with new technology.
“I Exhale” eschews techno conventions in a conventionally Underworld way. Here, they play up the fusion of forms we know and love in their work. The beat is familiar, plodding, mid-tempo. There’s a reverb-doused guitar strum, a two-chord movement in which bass and lead synth lines reflect each other, various electronic fizzles, and the beat poetry we’ve come to expect of vocalist Karl Hyde. After about a third of the way through, they add a subtle hi-hat pattern. It makes it sound like the sort of breakbeat record danced to by balding, profusely sweating men in their mid-30s. In Fabric. About 10 years ago. It also has a chorus bit filled with dreamy humming.
While it has none of the emotional resonance of their early attempts at the same sort of thing, it’s a perfectly serviceable album opener. But the problem is twofold. First, you can say much the same thing about the other more club-oriented cuts here. Second, it commits us to one of the deadly sins of dance music discourses — comparing its relentless chugging motion to a train journey. The DJ Koze remix (not included on the album) is more limber, slightly more danceable than the big, sturdy original. As well as making the whole thing shake a bit more, it foregrounds the vocal, allowing us all to delight in Hyde’s vocals.
Perhaps this sums up Barbara Barbara. It’s not really about working on the dancefloor. Rather, its purpose is to cement Underworld as elder statesmen of minor-arena-filling, rather than “floor-filling,” amorphously electronic music. It’s not hip, but it’s not square either. And we should all be fine with that.
More about: Underworld
