Last Night

by

Moby

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It's easy to forget that before Moby's multi-million-shifting 1999 album "Play", he was a fading rave artist.Putting his patented electro-blues on hold, he now re-embraces clubbier material, glitter-spraying it with lush synthesized strings and sweeping melodies.

The bald vegan god-botherer Moby has fallen back in love with dance music and with this album he shows how his disco faith remains fervent from the big rave anthem of "Everyday It's Like 1989" to the quizzical slow groove of "Ooh Yeah".

"Last Night", stuffed as it is with old-skool house and hedonistic club bangers, has more than a certain whiff of nostalgia about it.

The track "Alice", a low-end rumble of electronica and hip hop, is the killer track, but the rest of the album covers quite a different spectrum of sound. At least half of it is day-glo rave in nature, from opener, "Ooh yeah", to "I'm In Love" and "I Love To Move In Here"..

The album , while tinted with hip-hop, primarily celebrates the nebulous utopianism of acid-house nightlife, explicitly so on "Everyday It's 1989".

Pumping beats and sensual grooves abound, including several knowing throwbacks to Italian rolling pianos and belting diva vocals of late 1980s house music, which ring out on a paean to good times gone. But there are also pulsing electronic torch songs, lustrous instrumentals and woozy ballads.

Big on melodies and upbeat moods, "Last Night" is Moby's most non-rock, disco-friendly, purely pleasurable album since "Play".

Collaborators include Grandmaster Caz, the man who provided most of the rhymes for the first hip-hop hot Rappers' Delight, but, though this is supposed to be Moby, erm, letting his hair down, there is an air of detachment about this concept album which fosters, rather than dispels the idea of Moby as some intellectual knob-twiddler.

"Last Night" is, loosely, a concept album that seeks to conjure up a night of multiple clubbing and walking home woozily through Manhattan at dawn - and, by that measure, it's a triumph. It charts an evening out, spanning hands-in-the-air rave to elegantly trashed comedown

It has its great moments, and they're usually when he reveals his sense of fun.

Fortunately on the CD there's enough Mobyesque quirk to save it from banality.

Last Night is Moby's first album released by Mute US. When I was hearing reports that this was supposed to be more of a "dance album" compared to his more recent albums, I was excited to hear this. Unfortunately, after hearing Last Night, I was rather disappointed. While it's not a bad album, it definitely wasn't what I thought it was going to be.

In the liner notes, Moby included an essay explaining what his intent with the album was; he said he wanted to make an album that sounded like a night out in New York. While I understand that this is the sound that Moby was trying to achieve, it ultimately didn't work for me.

On Last Night, it sounds like Moby is trying to re-tread the sounds of several eras in his back catalog. "Ooh Yeah" sounds like Moby is trying to return to the sound from his Instinct Records days. I could also hear that some songs sounded like they could have fit onto albums in Moby's back catalog: Everything is Wrong ("I Love to Move in Here," "Everyday It's 1989," and "The Stars"), Play ("Alice"), and 18 ("Live for Today"). The song "Degenerates" sounded like it could have appeared on one of the ambient CDs that was released as part of limited edition versions of some of Moby's albums. Ultimately, it didn't feel as if Moby really brought anything new musically to this album.

The last four tracks on the CD are all downtempo, which seems to go against the idea of Last Night being a "dance album." Also, it really makes it much harder to listen to the end of the album, especially with the last song on the disc ("Last Night") running for almost ten minutes. "Sweet Apocalypse" and "Mothers of the Night" sound like they really should have been relegated as B-sides. If they had been, it really would have helped to improve the flow of the overall album.

Again, while Last Night isn't a bad album, it really wasn't what I was expecting. I will probably only pull this album out to listen to it if I need some background music, because it's just not the type of album I can really listen to unless it's in the background.