Moby - Wait For Me

Rating:

* * *

On Moby's ninth studio album it's as if many of the tracks start with the same swooning synth as 1999 hit

Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?

from

Play

, when he was at the height of his popularity.

Mistake

is a dead ringer for it - until he whips it up into a rockin' little dance tune. That song has a hokey, free-spirited mood to it that Moby hasn't revealed since his head banging-rave phase of the early to mid 90s.

Over all, though,

Wait For Me

is soothing, often beautiful and transcendental, but sometimes dreary, which is why

Why Does My Heart

springs to mind.

The many interludes - made up of forlorn synth and on

Stock Radio

its dissonant ambience to the fore - are like the beautiful but boggy sand at the high tide mark on a beach. Instead of acting as transition points they stilt the flow of the album.

And longer tracks, like the despairing

JLTF

, the static easy listening of

Hope Is Gone

and

Scream Pilots

, are wispy and waffly. Although, the latter redeems itself with an agitating industrial vacuum effect bringing it to a rugged end.

Still, after a few lean years and a couple of ho-hum albums, the little bald New Yorker has also come up with some of his most intriguing tunes yet.

The instrumental

Shot In the Back of the Head

ebbs and flows with a haunting menace, the pumping bass belch of

Pale Horses

is the standout of the vocal tracks (featuring the steely soul voice of Moby's mate Amelia Zirin Brown), and though the title track starts out like a soap opera theme it escalates into a smouldering, futuristic toe-tapper.

Scott Kara