MobyLast NightMute U.S.April 1, 2008
I'm not going to spend the beginning of this review talking about the commercial and artistic success of 1999 album Play - after a long absence from the club music scene, Moby deserves a clean slate on which to palate his return to nightlife starting with his new album Last Night.
What made and continues to make Moby a musical whiz kid is his ability to make electronica and dance music approachable, as he avoids (for the most part) those obnoxious pounding beats so familiar to the general public thanks to "Sandstorm." And Moby stays true to his roots in Last Night which serves as a survey of New York's nightclub scene.
Some might condemn Moby, claiming that this album is nothing new and simply a recycle of dance tracks we've heard before.
However Last Night is really nostalgia revamped, with the exception of "Everyday It's 1989," which is so indicative of the heyday of rave that it could have been lifted from an old cassette tape.
The album starts off with the cheesy and somewhat delicate melody on "Ooh Yeah" but quickly takes a turn for the best with "I Love to Move In Here" which is a strange melding of cool, sleek, almost tribal beats with classic '90s rap courtesy of the Cold Crush Brothers' Grandmaster Caz. Something about it effortlessly works in a way that makes you want to listen to it again.
It is obvious why Moby chose "Alice" as the single for the album: it similar to hip-hop songs that have now become the bread and butter of dance clubs.
This one can be appreciated by the mainstream music lovers without much difficult. It's a shame because although catchy, "Alice" lacks the complexity and heart behind many of the other tracks.
After "Disco Lies" and "The Stars," both of which are anthem-style whose late-'80s and early-'90s influences are quite evident, comes the letdown "Degenerates."
In the "narrative" that Moby has established, "Degenerates" is meant to serve as the early morning of a night on the town. However after two classic club songs, it's just anti-climactic.
Once in the down-tempo mood though, "Sweet Apocalypse" isn't terrible, but it sounds like Moby was having a little too much fun with all the buttons on his synthesizer. It's unfortunate that Last Night ends with "Last Night" and for that matter, the entire post-club tracks because like the day after a long night of clubbing, they are really a snooze. Moby does redeem himself with the last four minutes of "Last Night," in which there are no lyrics and just a simple, rainy day jazz melody.
With Moby's return to his forte of dance music, let's hope that this is a warm-up album - a chance to stretch his electronica legs. While there are a number of good tracks on the album, it is clear that Moby needs to get back in shape.
-Sarah Sabshon
Nick Cave and the Bad SeedsDig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!Anti RecordsApril 8, 2008
At this point, what else could come from Nick Cave - the bibliophilic, Australian singer-songwriter, who looks like a greasy mechanic in his Sunday best and sounds like the sing-speaking spawn of Davids Byrne and Bowie - but a hilarious meditation on the afterlife? Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, his fourteenth album with backing band The Bad Seeds, asks, "why should death be any more chaotic than life?" and answers, "why shouldn't it be?"
The title-track and opener finds Lazarus ("Larry") transported to celebrity-obsessed America, a celebrity in his own right for beating death. After a decadent, cross-country tour-de-force that ends in Ziggy Stardust-style self-destruction, with Larry "on the streets of New York City, in a soup queue, a dopefiend, a slave, then prison, then the madhouse, then the grave," he longs for the sort of blank, numb death he had before Jesus granted him and the rest of mankind eternal life.
Cave's knack for creating complex, fully-formed characters like Larry in four-minute poetic blasts is nearly unsurpassed in rock music; even Springsteen's Rosalita and Spanish Johnny are really just permutations of himself.
In "Today's Lesson", for example, we're never quite sure whether Mr. Sandman is Janie's pervert neighbor or her pet incubus, but it seems like even Janie doesn't know.
It's precisely this sort of ambivalence Cave is going for. In the centerpiece, "We Call Upon the Author", Cave addresses the sources of chaos and injustice, not knowing whether to blame humanity or God, not sure if this philosophizing is his curse or his reason to live.
When the lines threaten to collapse under his manic verbiage, Cave stands back, cries "Prolix", and the track dissolves into a white-noise-glazed, beat-box and fuzz-bass break before coming back faster, more intense, more frightening.
Musically, Cave tailors his experiments in post-post-punk to his lyrics, often building songs out of long, strophic drum and bass grooves and leaving the Seeds to chant the hooks and choruses. Doors-like organs and acoustic guitars pad out the tracks, leaving electric guitars either squealing in the background, or cutting into the mix with fuzzed out riffs and hectic white-noise. It's a formula with an impressive range: "Albert Goes West" is like mid-nineties REM, had Michael Stipe twisted school-yard puns into "the forest of Le Vulva" and "sucking a revolver", and had Peter Buck played his guitar with a fork; while "Moonland" evokes the cold, lunar landscape of the afterlife with its stark, jazz arrangement.
It's when Cave tinkers with this formula that the album sags. "Night of the Lotus Eaters", built on a sample of what first sounds like marimbas playing surf-rock but eventually becomes a foundation for backwards guitars and plastered sound-effects, is more meandering than stream-of-consciousness.
Towards the end, "Jesus of the Moon" is a "Moondance" tribute, complete with jazz flutes, and with no other purpose than to tie together the album's lyrical threads of Jesus and outer space.
Cave ends strong with "More News from Nowhere", which stretches its eight minutes to the limit, spinning a yarn about an afterlife populated by drag queens and Cyclops. It's an afterlife that's equal parts heaven and hell, where everyone wants your autograph, but then again, everyone wants your autograph.
Like Cave waiting for the after-after-life, we're left waiting for a resolution as Cave rides the guitar hook to the end with taunts of "goodbye". It's an impossible cliff-hanger where the only pay-off is to start the album over again.
-Max McKenna
