Play (1999)
When Moby lets loose with certain genres in full force, the results are extremely impressive. Those genres would be pure dance and pure pop. Don’t believe me? Listen to “Porcelain”, as beautiful a pop song as ever I’ve heard. Or the amazing “Bodyrock”…not so amazing because it’s (pretty) good, but because the sound doesn’t seem like it could possibly come from the same artist. When he dabbles in blues, however, the results are decidedly mixed. The first two songs on this album could turn anybody off…but “Natural Blues” is an inescapably good song. He obviously likes old-school blues, but I’ve never been a fan of the original articles, so there’s only so much anyone can do to salvage them. A very admirable and polished product, however. Even when it’s bad, it flickers at mastery. And you never know what he’s going to do next.
(“Porcelain”, “South Side”)
Grade: B+
18 (2002)
It starts out with two fairly good, typical Moby songs. A repeated phrase/refrain and some interesting backing music for it seems to be what he’s best at. I won’t knock him because I happen to enjoy what I’ve heard from him so far. The problem here is that since the musical attraction of the songs is similar to a mantra, if the backing music is no good it comes off as annoying trash rather than beautiful art. Alright, so I’ll knock him a little bit. But Godd@mnit, the sneaky bastard just KEEPS on rolling out perfect background music for his chants and occasional singing parts. Perfect in the sense that it always sounds “right”…the limit of his debatable genius, though, lies in the fact that the sameness of a lot of these songs doesn’t allow for a killer track. I know he wrote a couple of those on ‘Play’, but here it’s strictly for mood, it seems. When he does try to stray a bit, he finds failure instead of the overall success on ‘Play’. Will it make you feel eternal inner peace or put you right to sleep? Try it, and find out. Track 18: “The Streets Of MobyDelphia”
Grade: C