Moby's New CD A poignant song cycle that reveals its secrets over repeated listening
Moby Wait for Me (Mute)
by John Diliberto
Moby is famous as a maker of dance and electro-pop music, but the musician has always had an ambient side. You could hear it in his early work for the Instinct label, collected on the album, Ambient, as well as later albums like Play the B-Sides and the second disc of Hotel. But Wait for Me is Moby's most deeply felt and atmospheric album yet. He mixes minor key instrumentals that roil in undertows of texture with modern hymns and laments that ask the big questions in a personal way.
You can hear echoes of Moby's previous work throughout Wait for Me. Although there's only one track, "Study War," that has the archival voice samples Moby made famous on Play, his lyric phrasing has that sense of old gospel and blues, sampled and cut. "Pale Horses," a song contemplating death, recalls the wistful scratchy sampled vocals of Play, but are actually sung by Amelia Zirin Brown in a voice that's tired beyond her young years. And she does it again on the gospel hymn cadences of "Walk With Me ."
The title track is another song that seems to contemplate eternity of a lost soul. It's sung by Kelli Scarr, who has a fragility that breaks over the waves of Moby's ghost rhythms, minimalist piano figure and sonic scrims. She sings "I'm gonna ask you to look away, I lost my hands and it hurts to pray," like a half-remembered nursery rhyme, a paean to lost youth, a contemplation of the end.
On a couple of tracks, Moby sings in a voice that's less than perfect, but like Brian Eno, it's an instrument that conveys what's needed. He's heartbreaking on "Mistake," falling somewhere between David Bowie and Lou Reed in a song of regret, singing "You never felt this lost before, and the world is closing doors/I never wanted anything more." Despite desperate lyrics, it's the only rocking tune on the CD.
For all its synthesizers and processing tricks, Wait for Me is strangely quaint in its sound design, like a vision of the future from the past, covered in dust and cobwebs and attaining a deeper meaning through its archival status.
Of course there are cinematic moments like the instrumental "Shot in the Back of the Head," which takes a grinding, off-center backwards riff and then launches it into a twisted Ennio Morricone -like landscape with Moby's slide guitar. On "Scream Pilots," Moby spins around Ulrich Schnauss dancing on a surf rhythm, churning electronics and ringing guitar.
Moby said he wanted to make a personal album, and he did, but Wait for Me also speaks to universal yearning, in a song cycle that reveals its secrets over repeated listening. It will bring you to tears in its forlorn poignancy, but will lift you up in the end.
It's our Echoes CD of the Month for July. Wait for Me is not a summer album, but a timeless album.
John Diliberto selects the best new Echoes CD each month. Click here for more picks.
