Rockets – Moby
I had a brief interlude with Moby in the late 90s. I enjoyed Play and re-discovered Everything is Wrong (and had my mind blown by “Everytime You Touch Me”). But it faded fairly quickly and I never really returned. But I listened to him guest DJ on NPR’s All Songs Considered in March, and was reminded of what intrigued me about him as an artist. So I picked up his newest record Destroyed, and was pleasantly surprised to discover…it’s pretty good!
There are plenty of somewhat unnecessary indulgences (as you might expect on a 70 minute record from the guy), but more than enough jewels to make it worthwhile. Opener “The Broken Places” is spacey, but in the best of ways: delicate and measured. The following bunch of tracks is a step down, with a few decent ideas stretched out too thin. But the real core of the album shines through in the middle.
“Rockets” is a perfect example of what Moby does best. There’s an absolutely beautiful singing sample–so wispy that it feel likes it’s being heard at a distance of 100 years–held up and sustained by a network of electronic cables. It’s a wonderful balance of old and new, past and future. And the line being sung “it’s gone…that’s alright” feels eerily prescient. See “The Right Thing” for another great example of this aging effect.
“The Day” is a far more straightforward song, with a relatively simple verse-chorus-verse form. The result is something that lacks a bit of sophistication, but provides a rousing upbeat element.
Elsewhere, “The Violent Bear It Away” is a bit overlong (almost seven minutes) but packs a tremendous punch in its slow build. By the end, when the strings are swelling and beat marches on, there is a powerful urgency to its movement that remains completely self-contained. And “Victoria Lucas” offers a similar them, but this time building off of a low-key but rousing electro-dance beat.
I could do without some of the tracks here (“Blue Moon” seems wholly unnecessary while “Lie Down in Darkness” just feels like a weaker version of the albums’ good tracks), but the good work more than makes up for the inessential. It makes me think I might need to re-visit some of the intervening years in Moby’s work and see what I missed.