Underworld - Second Toughest in the Infants

Underworld's second electronic album, and my personal favourite, is different from their first not just in stylistic terms, but also because it didn't have a bunch of singles surrounding it. The band only released one real single from this album, "Pearl's Girl". Great! So only a couple B-sides then, right? …yeah, no. Since there was only one single, they completely overcompensated and released the single with eight B-sides. EIGHT. How did this happen? Well, the first problem is that this single was released twice. You see, in February 1996, the film Trainspotting was released. Featured on it, among other amazing songs, was Underworld's "Dark & Long" (Dark Train) and "Born Slippy .NUXX". While "Dark & Long" we have previously discussed, "Born Slippy .NUXX" was released as a non-album single in 1995. The song was used over the ending of the film, and became quite well known as a result. Underworld began to gain attention, but the "Born Slippy" single had been out of print for a year, and instead they issued their new single, "Pearl's Girl", in May. Under pressure from DJs and clubbers alike, in June they finally re-released "Born Slippy .NUXX" as a single, causing their popularity to explode as the song debuted at number 2 in the UK singles chart. And so, with this newfound popularity under their belt, they re-released "Pearl's Girl" in October for their new fans, with new B-sides.

The tracklist below is roughly the same as the US "Pearl's Girl" October single release, the only differences being that the original and edited versions of "Pearl's Girl" have been replaced with "Pearl's Girl" (Carp Dreams…Koi) and "Rowla" (Extended) - this is because "Pearl's Girl" is on the album and we don't do edits here, plus neither new track were featured on the original disc. The former is a version of "Pearl's Girl" and the latter is… complicated. The intros of "Rowla" and B-side "Cherry Pie" are exactly the same, and the song itself resembles "Pearl's Girl" somewhat. And since there is a special extended version of the track only available on promotional releases, I felt I might as well put it on the "Pearl's Girl" disc.

CD 2: "Pearl's Girl"

No.	Title	Original release	Length
1	Pearl's Girl (Tin There)	"Pearl's Girl" single, October 1996	8:11
2	Pearl's Girl (14996 Version)		8:50
3	Puppies		3:51
4	Oich Oich	"Pearl's Girl" single, May 1992	8:33
5	Cherry Pie		8:22
6	Pearl's Girl (Carp Dreams…Koi)		10:07
7	Rowla (Extended)	"Rowla" promo single, 1996	8:25
8	Mosaic	"Pearl's Girl" single, May 1996	5:01
9	Deep Arch		10:00
			69:49

So, yeah. That's quite a few. But what about "Born Slippy"? That wasn't on the album, as I mentioned, so what do we do with it? Well, it was included on a bonus disc in re-releases of Second Toughest, again for their new fans. On later re-releases (like the 20th anniversary one), the song has become associated with this album. So, it's best we assemble the "Born Slippy" single here. Like "Dark Train" from the dubnobass set, the version of ".NUXX" here is shorter than usual because it is segued with ".TELEMATIC", as it was presented on the original CD single.

CD 3: "Born Slippy"

No.	Title	Original release	Length
1	Born Slippy	"Born Slippy" single, 1995	8:31
2	Born Slippy .NUXX		9:44
3	Born Slippy .TELEMATIC		9:39
4	Born Slippy .NUXX (Deep Pan)	"Born Slippy .NUXX" single, 1996	10:00
			37:54

And now, like the previous Underworld album, it's time to assemble the bonus rarities, which we'll tack on the end of the "Born Slippy" disc. We have the Darren Emerson remix of "Confusion the Waitress" that never made it off of test pressings, and a 26 minute "Pearl's Girl" jam session released in 2019.

CD 3 continued: Rarities

No.	Title	Original release	Length
5	Confusion the Waitress (Darren Emerson Remix)	"Confusion the Waitress" test pressing, 1996	7:32
6	Pearl's Girl (Jam 080624)	"Pearl's Girl (Jam 080624)" single, 2019	25:59
			71:25

Of course, this isn't all there is: Underworld has a (slightly incomplete) Super Deluxe Edition with B-sides like mine, but also with two bonus discs of unreleased content from these sessions. I would recommend checking them out, with "Bug" and "Bing Here" being personal favourites.