LOVE IT: Moby - Wait For Me.

Moby has a rare gift. He doesn't seem capable of sucking at anything. Whether he's creating pulse-pounding beats or lulling melodies, the man has got skills. He's never been a huge name, which makes his artistic statement more genuine and impressive. He makes music because he feels something and wants the person putting on their headphones to feel it too. With Wait For Me, his ninth studio album, Moby is experimenting again, to mostly great effect. He said he set out to make "a really emotional, beautiful record." And succeed he has. The album is one big instrumental cloud of ethereal where-am-I-ness, like how it must feel trying to sprint on the Moon.


The way-too-short album opener, "Division," seems like it'd be right at home on a war movie soundtrack. A mass of strings swell emotively as cellos drag the melody along in the mud towards that Bright Light. It's touching and epic - just the kind of thing I'd expect to hear during the slow motion climax of a gruesome battle.

As "Shot In The Back Of The Head" begins, it sounds like it was recorded in some messy teenager's basement, slapped onto vinyl, then crunched around in a washing machine and laid out in the sun for a couple days, but at about 40 seconds, we're back to the studio for more synth glossiness. But I guess we should expect that kind of bipolar recording from a Moby experiment inspired by David Lynch.

"Stock Radio" is a stream of vibrating and swishing monotone nothingness, 50 seconds of "recording an old broken bakelite radio and running it through some broken old effects pedals to see what it would sound like." It's sometimes fun to see what artists do for fun, but this track is random and oddly placed on an album of personal, emotional melodies.

"Study War's" pacifist message is super timely and meaningful, and the tune is upliftingish, but five minutes of spoken repetition is no one's friend.

I have never tried to imagine what elevator music and a cathedral choir would sound like together. Thanks to "A Seated Night," now I don't have to. Interesting.

Moby simultaneously draws us in and shoves us away during Wait For Me. This confusion is slightly uncomfortable, yet refreshing in today's verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus style of songwriting. Moby was right: this is different, beautiful, emo stuff. Encompassing the listener with soothing and lilting swarms of sound, he definitely develops a mood. As soothing as the mood is, however, an hour of this synthy warmth and I'm mental putty. Don't listen to this at work or while operating heavy machinery.