Moby
Wait For Me
2009
Little Idiot
Oh, Moby, you know I can't stay mad at you.
After last year's dreadfully bad attempt at returning to dance music, Moby has gone back to the sound that helped 1999's Play become such a success. Recorded in the artist's home studio and mixed by Ken Thomas of Sigur Ros, Moby's latest, entitled Wait For Me, is downtrodden, world-weary, intensely personal, and a rather lo-fi affair, but also a resounding success.
I hate to imply that Moby, once a champion of the early underground techno and dance scene, can no longer produce good dance music. One listen to 2004's Baby Monkey, released under the Voodoo Child moniker, will show that Moby still has what it takes to make music that will entice you to get onto the dancefloor and shake your thing. However, with age his output has slowly shifted to an appropriately more mature sound and it has largely paid off.
Wait For Me is shades of Play and its all-too-similar follow-up 18, but it doesn't feature many of the same pitfalls of the latter. It's similar, but not identical in tone or composition. There are precious few of the looped samples and old recordings that dominated those two records, and a handful of songs move into new directions for the self-proclaimed Little Idiot. A large portion of the tracks run under four minutes, creating bite-sized nuggets of melancholy music that never become too overwhelming or utterly depressing.
The lead-off single, "Shot In The Back Of The Head", is nothing short of fantastic with its backwards guitar riff and echoing accents. Numerous songs feature Moby's trademark use of synthesized strings, including the opening track "Division", "Study War", "Mistake", "A Seated Night", "Slow Light", and a lone violin sound on the title track to name a few. For some reason though, it sounds incredibly fresh and more lush than it ever has in the past, and could almost be mistaken for live strings in some spots.
Numerous vocalists lent their talents to the recording as well, but in order to achieve a more vintage sound, Moby ran their vocals through numerous processors. The effect is subtle and effective, giving the whole album the feel of an old record you may have picked out of your local independent store's used vinyl bins more than a pristinely produced modern CD.
The effect is most evident on the album's second single, "Pale Horses", in which the vocals were recorded then rerecorded several more times after being filtered and processed. The result is a brand new vocal track that almost sounds like an old sample, crackling slightly in the speakers over a muted drum pattern and simple analog synths.
Other highlights include "Walk With Me", which almost feels like a leftover from Play, with a very distinct spiritual and gospel vibe, and low key, downtempo music that gradually builds to compliment the vocals. Moby himself also provides vocals for "Mistake" in his famously shaky, untrained voice, but this is partially what endears the listener to the song. "Mistake" sounds more like an outtake from 2005's Hotel, with a more traditional song structure and instrumentation that steers away from electronics, save for the digitized strings.
Many of the album's tracks even sound as though they were recorded from several generations of cassette tape, particularly "Ghost Return" and the delicate closer "Isolate". There's noticeable fuzz and that unmistakable vibrato caused by tape decay. Yet strangely, this is precisely why the album works as well as it does. In a world of soulless, overproduced, commercial friendly music, Wait For Me hearkens back to a simpler time - a time before Auto Tune and ProTools could correct any and all shortcomings.
The only mild complaint I have is Moby's reliance on samples in the track "Study War". As he did on Play, Moby takes an excerpt from a speech and loops portions of it over and over. It's a holdover from his days as strictly a dance artist, and it may have worked back then, but now it seems like an outdated and somewhat amateurish convention. Thankfully, it's nowhere near as obnoxious as the samples that dominated Last Night, and the softer music helps lessen the impact, sounding more akin to "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" than the intolerable "Everyday It's 1989".
Moby may be alienating his fans who want him to produce nothing more than simplistic, though admittedly catchy, dance music, but he shows a vulnerable, mature side of himself on Wait For Me. This is an album with depth, filled with beautiful - if sad - compositions, and it's easily his best complete work since he hit the big time with Play.
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