Played Out
What follows is probably a grossly unfair review of Moby's new album, 18, the follow-up to his 1999 breakthrough disc Play. Unfair, because as a longtime fan of Moby and some of his weirder forays into techno and ambient music, I know what this brilliant artist is capable of, and I know that both Play and 18 represent only a small fraction of his palette. Also, unfair because any follow-up to an album like Play is almost inevitably going to be a disappointment. For all its calculated commercial appeal, Play was still a great, sweeping record that deserved all the praise and success it received. 18 deserves to be successful, too, but I still can't help feeling a bit let down that such a willfully frustrating and mercurial artist has released an album that stays so close to the style he forged for himself on Play.
Not that everything here is a rehash of past successes -- but tracks like the gospel-toned "In This World" and "In My Heart", and the trip-hop/string-laden "Sunday (The Day Before My Birthday)", echo tracks off Play so strongly that they sound like outtakes. But no, swears Moby; in his apologetically preachy liner notes, he claims the tracks on 18 represent the best of 150 songs he wrote for the album. If this is true, it represents an artistic rut of epic proportions -- unless maybe some of the other 132 tracks were just too weird or edgy for the feel-good vibe he's clearly chosen to stick with here.
Because make no mistake -- for all of 18's grim 9/11 references and melancholy chord progressions, these songs are all shot through with a warm, fuzzy undertone that gives the whole album a disposition as sunny as the smile on Moby's face on that goofy cover photo. You can hear it in the strings that wash through nearly every track, in the rock and trip-hop beats that always have a little bounce in them no matter how much Moby slows them down. This is the sound of a guy who's pretty darn content with life right now -- and why not? His last album sold ten million copies, and he's now a bona fide, actress-dating superstar. It's no coincidence that he chooses to end this album with a song called "I'm Not Worried at All".
But enough with my disappointment -- let's talk about the bright spots on 18, most of which stand out precisely because they don't sound so much like Play outtakes. The obvious highlight is the album's opener and first single, "We Are All Made of Stars", a midtempo rocker that sounds kind of like an R.E.M. cover of David Bowie's "Heroes". Even Moby's vocals, usually so thin they're distracting, sound pretty good here -- either his singing's improved, or Moby the producer has gotten better at masking the shortcomings of Moby the singer. Better vocals aside, "We Are All Made of Stars" is still recognizably a Moby track, with those trademark soaring strings and a decidedly electronic edge to its arrangement, but it's the most conventional-sounding "pop" song he's ever recorded, and in this case that's not a bad thing -- it's catchy and uplifting without being corny.
Moby lends his reedy pipes to three other tracks on 18, but as on Play, it's the samples and guest vocals that make the most lasting impressions. Freedom Bremner, lead singer of Radical Thought Resistance, does a very credible R&B falsetto on "At Least We Tried", on which Moby borrows a hooky, slow-shuffle beat from Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" to create a surprisingly soulful ballad. "Jam for the Ladies" is the album's "Body Rock", a hip-hop workout with featuring Angie Stone, MC Lyte, and a funk bassline so thick you couldn't cut it with a chainsaw; "Great Escape" is a sparse, uncharacteristically beatless ditty featuring nicely hushed vocals from newcomer Azure Ray. Moby will get a lot of attention for casting a very restrained Sinead O'Connor against the indie-rock arrangement on "Harbor", but the experiment is not entirely successful -- it sounds too much like '80s college rock for its own good. For my money, the album's most intriguing track is "Another Woman", an eerie, slow-burn trip-hop number that uses a sample of '60s soul singer Barbara Lynn and an ominously thick bass line to create a dark, loungy sound that Moby hasn't explored anywhere near enough.
Moby does wipe the smile off his face long enough to deliver effectively morose, understated vocals on the haunting "Sleep Alone", a moody meditation on the September 11th tragedy that features the album's most memorable lyric: "At least we were together, holding hands / Flying through the sky". It would be easy to accuse Moby of exploiting that famous, heartbreaking image of people jumping from the World Trade Center, but the song is restrained enough, and its imagery oblique enough, to stay within the bounds of taste.
Elsewhere, most of 18 is pleasant but unchallenging and unremarkable, a level Moby seems to be content to aim at for at this point in his career. Instrumentals like the somber "Look Back In" and the achingly pretty "Fireworks" sound like background music for a Six Feet Under episode yet to be shot; "Sunday (The Day Before My Birthday)" takes the pop/gospel sound Moby mastered on Play to places that are at once sweeter and more formulaic. Like I said, it all deserves to be successful, and will probably please many of Moby's fan, especially the ones who were first exposed to him with Play. But it's so darn safe, and that's something I've never felt you could say about Moby before. Not that I expected another Animal Rights, but I was hoping to be stunned, frustrated, at least surprised. Because not many artists are capable of doing that, and I'd like to believe that Moby, however skillful he's become at mining this particular pop/electronica vein, is still one of them.
— 21 June 2002
