Moby - Hotel

Sun 3rd Apr, 2005 in Music Reviews

Moby was once one of those musical trailblazers that everyone respected. Sure he wasn’t selling his tunes to advertising companies, didn’t get to sleep with Natalie Portman and the public contention with Eminem didn’t exist – but he was actually quite a respectable guy. He was melodically inventive, aurally challenging and paved the way for a heap of rave techno producers. Even his publicly acclaimed 1999 record, Play, used some interesting samples from old blues and gospel field recordings, mashing together dance and blues in a most interesting way. But I’m afraid anything that was once remotely interesting about Moby has all but vanished.

Moby has apparently decided to hang up the sampler and write some post-punk songs. This is quite simply bullshit. What Moby has done is write some pop/rock songs with a little electronic twist. Now I’m not sure how many obsessive Moby fans there are out there, but you’d probably best stop reading now… Actually, no, keep reading – you need to know how bad this record is.

So it opens with the imaginatively titled Hotel Intro a fairly nice sounding instrumental, making great use of some lush orchestral strings, but after this we’re subjected to some pappy rock songs that are so bland and unexciting that they seem to make time drag by ever so slowly. Is Moby trying to make a U2 album? I hate U2, anyway – so a pale imitation does very little to impress me.

Beautiful, the first single, is the musical equivalent of the hotels Moby himself describes in the liner notes – no matter what happens in there, they always end up sterile. Thus the guitar solo and vocoder effects essentially do nothing to add any interest to the song.

Lift Me Up and Where You End sound far too similar too each other for my liking, complete with safe, electronic backing tracks and deadset cringeworthy lyrics. Here’s just a sample of what our favourite bald, vegan celebrity has penned recently.

Hardly Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, is it?

Temptation is a cover of the New Order classic and it sees Laura Dawn take the lead vocal reigns for the first time. I must say, she has a far more appealing voice than Moby but that doesn’t mean the cover is done any form of justice, sounding more like an Australian Idol arrangement than the work of a once great artist.

After Dream About Me, Moby injects a bit of electronic influence, which he is much better at pulling off than what has come before. The backing for I Like It is kind of interesting and listenable but the last few tracks really fail to offer anything new. Anything that may seem promising is almost certainly ruined by Moby’s voice, which really does irritate, seeing as the man has absolutely no vocal range or diversity. Another instrumental closes the album and it’s the best song I’d heard since the start of the record – even though it’s about three minutes too long. Go figure.

The only thing that makes this record worthwhile listening to is the second disc, full of ambient tracks Moby has added. Well, it doesn’t exactly make it worthwhile, but they’re a far cry better than the songs on the album proper.

These relatively sparse, soundscape like pieces show a bit of restraint and produce some interesting creative ideas. However these tracks certainly aren’t strong enough to make an album on their own.

Moby, mate, I’m disappointed. You’re no longer pushing boundaries and your maturity is boring, not innovative, like it should be. I’m sad to say I’ve given up on you.