Moby

When I heard that Moby was going to release a concept album about a single night spent clubbing that would involve him actually releasing dance music, I was pretty ecstatic. Like a lot of people my age, I first heard of Moby when he was conquering MTV with his breakthrough album Play—an album that fused techno grooves with ambience and the occasional sample of field recordings. I found (rather, I find) the album incredibly moving and exciting, and I can probably credit it for redeeming electronic music in my then-young mind.

Moby then made his way onto 18, which was like a not-quite-as-good version of Play still holding some memorable tracks. It didn’t quite dominate MTV’s Total Request Live like its predecessor, but it did provide a great theme song for the Bourne trilogy (“Extreme Ways”) and one of my favorite Moby songs (“In This World”). Things were really looking good for this Moby guy and me. He had created in me a new appreciation for an entire genre of music that had previously escaped. So what did he do next? He released a mindless, clichéd piece of crap entitled Hotel.

It took me quite a while to even come back to Moby after Hotel. I kept asking myself the question that Jack Black poses to John Cusack in High Fidelity: “Is it in fact unfair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter-day sins?” I had to look back to Moby’s pre-Play past to realize that this a guy who had built a career on inventive dance music before he ever released his 401K-equivalent Play, which just happened to be the most accessible thing he had ever released (which is probably how it turned me from anti-electronic to pro-electronic).

Last Night, in many ways, is a return to form. No, it’s not a return to Play, though the vocal sampling on “Everyday It’s 1989” will certainly make you feel like you’re listening to Play or 18. It’s definitely a return to the world of dance music for Moby, who for the last decade has basically just released scattered dance songs among his mostly ambient pop albums.

On one level, the album plays like a history of dance music from 1989 to 1997, but with very modernized feel. He certainly takes the occasional drum sample from the period and covers the various styles of the period, but he definitely puts a very post-2000 Moby spin on it all.

On another level, Moby really does accomplish his stated mission with this album. In other words, it feels like a night out. The album initiates with fun songs (“Ooh Yeah” and “I Love to Move in Here”) that really capture that early-in-the-night excitement, when you’re glad that the weekend has finally arrived and just ready to be around people who don’t have on a tie (unless it’s a skinny tie). The next two songs (“257.Zero” and “Everyday It’s 1989”) capture that mix of energy and adrenaline as you first hit the floor. The next section slows down a bit into a nice groove (enough that I imagine the film-version of this album using some slow-motion dancing scenes at this point), and it’s that part of the night when you’ve actually forgotten about your week and the music and the movement has sort of taken over. When the album hits “Degenerates,” it’s like you can actually feel that moment when the exhaustion of waking up that morning for work and going out to a club to dance has finally caught up with you. It’s followed by an ambient malaise of finding the car/cab, getting home, and peeling off your clothes. When the soft sound of “Last Night” hits, you can almost feel yourself collapsing into bed and drifting off to sleep.

This album is by no means perfect, and it’s not Moby’s best. Nonetheless, it’s exciting to see the man who had drifted so far from his calling on his last album return to what he does best. It’s great to hear Moby trying to make us dance again, even if he’s not doing it nearly as well other artists around.

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