Moby : Wait For Me :: Review

Moby faced enormous levels of critical backlash and was left for dead after several disappointing releases (Last Night,18, Hotel) failed to deliver on the promise of 1999’s “Play” album.  Then again, when one of your albums is a genre definer, how do you follow it up without the critical repercussions?  I’ll tell ya how, release a new album with more than one Kanye West guest spot and you’re guaranteed a smash record!  On “Wait For Me,” Moby has crafted two pop gems with this guru that are outta sight!

I kid, of course as Kanye West is thankfully nowhere in sight on what could be perceived as Moby’s homecoming album.  “Wait For Me” is an album that signifies Moby’s critical rebirth and marks a welcome return to the expansive and sweeping sound Moby has become famous for.  Gone are the famous guest stars and the overblown production, as Moby has opted to make a simple and warm album that focuses on the tunes.  In his press release Moby states, “I wanted to make a record that was beautiful and warm and open and inviting, and also a little more idiosyncratic and personal.”

While “Wait For Me” achieves those goals, it is also spartan and doesn’t particularly follow any popular trends.  “Wait For Me” is an album that you can listen to part to whole but really benefits when it is listened to as a whole.  This is a record made for headphones as the austere production and sound separation demands it.  You could call this record, Music for Music’s sake.  Moby mentions, “I wanted to make something that a 26 year-old woman, in her apartment, depressed can relate to.”

“Wait For Me” is a heavy record in terms of the amount of sheer emotion that Moby conveys in all of the songs.  From the opening wash of elegiac synths of “Division” and the R&B inflected “Pale Horses,” you could sit enraptured by the beauty of Moby’s music.  “Shot In The Back of the Head” jars you back to reality with its somber processed backwards  riffing which is positively mood altering.  The sampled field dialog, gentle cadence and soulful vocals of “Study War” is reminiscent of “Play” and makes me wish I had some liner notes so I could properly credit its authors.  “Mistake” sounds touched by the ghost of Ian Curtis, as the vocal is almost a dead ringer for him, or maybe it’s Lou Reed…it’s kind of hard to tell who the singer is at times.

As the second side of “Wait For Me” opens, “Scream Pilots” kicks off a tenuous vibe where the rest of the music that follows seems unsettled.  “Scream Pilots” is drowned in reverb and sounds almost alien when paired with the antique synthesizers and warm strings that envelope it.  The title track, “Wait For Me” offers a ghostly piano intro followed by the off-putting and possibly semi-confessional lyric, “I’m going to ask you to look away/I like my hands but it hurts to pray/the life I have isn’t what I’ve seen/the skies aren’t blue and the fields aren’t green/pray for me/pray for me/wait for me.”  The torchy “Hope Is Gone” follows casting an indigo haze around the remaining album.  By the time the album closes, Moby shines some light onto the dark recesses of his psyche but then closes everything off with the stately “Isolate.”  Surely “Wait For Me” is a contender for album of the year.

Rating:

“Wait For Me” is available June 30 on Mute.

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This post was submitted by greg.