Review Summary: Moby makes a record for Moby; wearing a frown, but in triumph.
Passing the 40 year mark, Richard Melville Hall keeps his head in the game. The man knows how to change with the rapid rate of sound and music development - a smart thing to keep ontop of if Hall wants to continue his run as an impeccable electronica icon.
This is Moby inspired and focused, and we have director David Lynch to thank for it. Ever since Lynch's passionate speech about creativity existing beautifully apart from market pressures, our melancholy monk was rubbing sticks together to ignite
Wait For Me. It's a collection of truly personal and truly beautiful songs, thankfully dropping the charade of trying to impress everyone but himself. Chalk this newly installed motivation up alongside the album being mixed by Sigur Rós' Ken Thomas, and you get Mr. Hall's finest album since
Play.
Consistent through the entire album,
Wait For Me brings you to its own planet with a windy breath and stable core. You see the planet's first glow of innocent life in "
Pale Horses". With help from singer Amelia Zirin Brown, the eerie track lights the way of the album:
"Put me by the window, let me see outside
Looking at the places where all my family died."
You will find her voice works in getting across the sadder, more delicate songs such as the enchanting pieces "
jltf" or "
Walk With Me" . If you were a big fan of
Play, check out the latter as it has the same characteristics with his added 'spacey' sound.
There's no better time than now to look at Moby's description for his work of art: "I wanted to make something that a 26 year-old woman, in her apartment, depressed can relate to." Well, I'm not a 26 year-old woman, but even I, being a man among men, was challenged to keep my eyes dry throughout the record.
The limitless acceptance and openness of mixer Ken Thomas flows more than nicely alongside Moby's expanding creativity. It gives the artist room to make quality tracks while fooling around here and there, like in "
Stock Radio" where Moby records a broken old bakelit radio through broken effect pedals for about a minute. You know, just for fun. The real quality comes in with the depressingly solid, first Moby-sung song on the album, "
Mistake". Such simple lyrics muttered with true desperation: "Don’t let me make the same mistake again".
Moby's style has always been the bob and weave kind. He'll place instrumental tracks in just the right spots among songs with great vocals and songs that only supply one beat - one looping melody - one spoken sentence. It's worked in his past (hence, electronica), why try and fix what's not broken? A spot-on example of said instrumental is "
Scream Pilots" that I can't help but feel arrives at the perfect time.
Wait For Me has all the ingredients it needs to make an electrically emotional record. The voices that participate effectively moan meaningful yet plain lyrics that are threaded through uncomplicated instrumental tracks like "
Ghost Return" and the positive, relaxed sounding "
Slow Light". Inspired and personal is the field in where Moby confirmedly shines. Like it's album cover,
Wait For Me leaves you feeling as if you were abandoned on an isolated planet. In this case, however, you'd be totally cool with it.
