Strawberry Hotel

Appreciate the storytelling of Strawberry Hotel without shuffling. It’s nearly a five-star experience, too, its facilities and furnishings impressing greatly – along with the conviction that Underworld are as good and as vital as ever.

Whether it’s the lengthier, arpeggiating climaxes of “Gene Pool” or the shorter, more reflective burbles of “Burst of Laughter,” it feels like they haven’t lost a step.

Treated and more elaborately arranged vocals are the fore on Strawberry Hotel. [Dec 2024, p.109]

Their eleventh album proves there’s plenty of life in the old dog boys yet.

Thirty years on from Dubnobasswithmyheadman, the masters of post-rave audio narrative still know how to blow your tiny mind. [Dec 2024, p.90]

The dancefloor remains in Underworld’s forebrain, 30 years since their breakthrough with genre-straddling third album Dubnobasswithmyheadman (1994). The abstractions towards the end of Strawberry Hotel are every bit as inviting.

Overall, Strawberry Hotel manages to create a very dynamic experience, especially by introducing shorter tracks. Only during its latter half it starts meandering, a thing that could have been avoided had a couple of intense numbers been introduced at the right moments. Nevertheless, the album is another successful entry in Underworld’s catalogue, one that seems to be a grower this time around.

The two divergent halves of the album never intermingle and propose two very opposite visions for what Underworld aim to achieve, yet there’s not really a single bad track here. Still, the tension remains, and can never quite dissolve.