Underworld: Strawberry Hotel (Smith Hyde Productions)
Here are the opening lyrics of Strawberry Jam Girl taken from Underworld's 11th studio album Strawberry Hotel.
Sleeping girl, kiss the animal
Telephone the animal
Tomorrow the animal will take me to the moon
It's like a short story. Baby shoes never worn. Except we shouldn't take their lyrics too seriously. Karl Hyde once said his lyrics come from pretty much nowhere. The words for Pearl's Girl ("red yellow, red yellow black") are simply him looking at the colours of cars passing a window he was looking out of. I bet he gets through a hundred notebooks a year.
Strawberry Hotel is one of Underworld's strongest albums. Up their with the old stuff. It's a real ride as Denver Luna's epic kinetic rumble careens into the contemplative disco of Techno Shinkansen which then leads into the starched stomp of And The Colour Red. "Please don't shuffle," say the album notes, justly.
The second half is less coherent. The lyrics get more childish, it keeps drifting into ambient interludes, and, unusually for Underworld, fok singer Nina Nastasia turns up for a guest spot. It feels like the band trying out ideas for a twelfth studio album.
Still, it's here in my top ten because, in the words of Strawberry Jam Girl:
Wrapped around him pierced
Hissing piston in the tube hole spreadin'
Claw of the animal
Eating pizza
Okay, that wasn't helpful. Let's move on.
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