18, the soon-to-be-released record from electronic pop all-star Moby, has all the symptoms of a crappy second record. It’s a boring, transparent stab at repeating the magic (and commercial success) of the multiplatinum-selling album that established him in the public’s eye.
But 18 is Moby’s seventh full-length record, not his second. After various incarnations as a punk rocker, new age-y activist and all-around dork, Moby dropped Play in 1999 and stumbled upon his personal gold mine?simple piano lines, unabrasive beats and crooning soul samples fine-tuned to car commercial-ready perfection. The sounds were pure, catchy and made him rich as hell.
So, having found new life as someone ridicuously famous, he is now doing what such people often do?trying desperately to hold his ground by making some of the worst music of his career. Maybe all he needs is 200 cc of relative commercial failure, stat, to get his ass back in gear. I hope so, for his sake, because that’s exactly what he’s about to get.
After the lackluster “We Are All Made of Stars,” the record’s first single and opening track, you can almost hear Moby cursing himself for having stepped ever-so-slightly away from Play’s winning formula. Surprise, surprise, the second track, “In This World,” wastes no time, and heads straight into some bluesy vocals while Moby flexes some simple piano. But despite Moby’s best intentions to the contrary, the result just doesn’t have the magic, even though the recipe has wowed in the past.
These two tracks prove to be a microcosm of the entire album, as it bounces between slightly new approaches to being Moby (I know?let’s get Sinead O’Connor to sing!) that aren’t very good, and financially proven approaches to being Moby (piano, etc.) that also aren’t very good.
But the tracks that don’t sound like Play B-sides are occasionally noteworthy. Moby is certainly deserving of some recognition for finding the rock that MC Lyte was hidden under, and picking it up. Sadly, that recognition will not be coming in the form of, say, a Grammy. “Jam For the Ladies,” the product of this collaboration, has a boring, bare-bones beat. Moby decided to give Lyte’s vocals some bizarre studio treatment which flat-out fails. The Sinead track, meanwhile, is disappointingly innocuous, so no punchline is forthcoming.
The record’s eighth track, “Fireworks,” demonstrates exactly how far from relevance Moby has fallen. The song is total Christmas muzak, complete with softly-lit synthesizers and a spot of cheezy flute. How someone whose ear was so finely tuned to the pop psyche as recently as the late ‘90s could fall so far so fast is utterly amazing.
Considering that the man spent so many years watching the pop world from the outside, one might think that Moby could have dodged the sophomore album-itis bullet. But apparently the man needed the indulgence. Hopefully, the ego bruise which will follow this record’s failure will help him move on.
