“Disco Lies” is more diva melodrama, this time without that sweet pumping piano, which returns for one last triumphant tune, “The Stars,” perhaps the best of these piano-driven energy-boosts. And you’ll need that energy to make it through the soporific latter half of the album (presumably the last four hours of the night are spent dozing on the couch).
“Degenerates” yields slow industrial bangs echoing among lilting string and piano swells. This music is tender and thoughtful enough, but it’s never clear about what. They also don’t sound like they were made twenty years ago. They sound like they could have been made by Brian Eno at any point in his career.
Moby has a gig lined up April 3 at Hiro Ballroom in New York with a couple of of-the-moment deckmates: French house purveyor (and Justice cohort) D.J. Mehdi and electro vet Tommy Sunshine.
He’s been getting major accolades for his return to the decks, and his love for dance music cannot be doubted (though a recent set at a Playboy party at SXSW (edgy!) was reported to have climaxed with “Paradise City,” which sounds a little cheap).
Perhaps the dance music scene has allowed Moby to be a bit easy on himself. After all the dance scene seems endlessly inclusive of every wastrel of a sub-genre that ever reared its head. Everyone is welcome to the party.
That Moby helped usher in a decade of fascinating and diverse dance music that hasn’t had to compromise or “cross over,” but has simply entered easily into the public perception of pop, makes him both the guest of honor and the guy who should have sent his regrets. This could have been an opportunity for Moby to expand his musical pallette as well as bring some of his former glories back into the rotation. Instead what he created was an album heavy on the worst sort of retro-futurist fluff. In that time-warp, Moby’s music hasn’t aged a day.
