Moby: Last Night

Moby's last album, Hotel, shot up the charts of

those curious mid-period albums by artists who seem to have lost all interest

in their own enterprise at the most fundamental level. That couldn't have been

what he was going for, but the glaring mess of it all certainly made the

album's glum quasi-rock songs more memorable than they might have been

otherwise.

So consider it a wise move on Moby's part to

regroup. Or rather than regroup, to return to his formative form as a DJ and

producer of what, well before 1999's Play made him a certifiable star, used to be

called rave music. Last Night's rewind approach may be too screamingly literal

for those wanting or expecting some sort of progress to be strived

for—see Grandmaster Caz rapping about "the old school taking it back" on

"I Love To Move In Here," or another song actually titled "Everyday It's

1989"—but Last Night is nonetheless an extremely warm, loving, moving

album concerned with more than just vintage sounds.

Antic tracks like "257.zero" and "Disco Lies" find

Moby revisiting the sort of functional dance beats and dramatic synthesizer

sighs that made his name. And then there are many rave-y piano vamps with

throaty divas belting songs of redemption—the kind, it turns out, that

make "Everyday It's 1989" play like a track for the ages.