Moby - Last Night

[Rocknroll]

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By Caryn Ganz (Rollingstone)- rate 4/5:

Club drugs and rock stars abide by the same rule: What goes up must come down. After hitting a massive high on 1999's Play, Moby stopped making dance music, opting instead for the downtempo atmospherics of 2002's 18 and the strummed guitars of 2005's Hotel. So it's exciting to hear this forty-two-year-old vegan blogger return to form. A concept album about an all-night bender, Last Night solidifies Moby's link in the chain that binds DJ pioneers like Todd Terry to slinky futurists like Justice. From the space-age-Abba shimmer of "Ooh Yeah" to the itchy funk of the brilliant Nineties house throwback "Disco Lies," Moby goes for groove over texture, relying on high-hats, piano and strings while wisely staying off the mike. The album is billed as a love letter to New York nightlife, but tracks like the dance-hop "I Love to Move in Here" (featuring Grandmaster Caz) feel more like an Irish wake for the era before the city's megaclubs were shuttered. Appropriately, Last Night's only drawback is the harsh slowdown of the trancelike "Degenerates." After so many body-rocking tunes, it's like any sobering slap: a real downer.

By Jerome Blakeney (BBC):

So, after the rock dabblings of 18 and the like, Moby returns with...what? Has the 42-year old friend of advertisers the world over made a mid-life crisis album? Is that 'last' in the title a literal reference to a night out on the New York club scene, or is it the bald one's elegy to his last ever clubbing forays? Certainly Last Night, stuffed as it is with old-skool house and hedonistic club bangers, has more than a certain whiff of nostalgia about it.

Supposedly chronicling a night out on the tiles in the Big Apple, LN is a bold return from wrong-headed experimentation. However those who only know of his return through the single, Alice may be wrong-footed. Alice itself, a low-end rumble of electronica and hip hop, is a killer track, but the rest of the album covers quite a diferent spectrum of sound. At least half of it is day-glo rave in nature, from opener, Ooh yeah, to I'm In Love and I Love To Move In Here.. It's all sequencers and glow sticks As the song title says Everyday It's 1989. So is Moby recalling his youth or is he genuinely interested in reintroducing the world to his own smiley face? The fact is that he has obviously updated his sounds to match current trends as well. Disco Lies and The Stars are equal parts Black Box and Justice. Whether this is a good thing all depends on where you are when you hear it. On the dance floor it's going to be unstoppable. It's on the more monumental, ad-friendly tracks that he comes a cropper. Mothers Of The Night and Hyenas are the kind of coffee table fare that got him hated by so many in the first place.

Naturally, as the night's story arc peters out the vibe gets more languid. Degenerates is a slo-mo dredge through the chemical afterburn; post indutrial and a little creepy, while hidden track Lucy Vida is a gorgeous spill through jazzy exhaustion. If you're a child of the late '80s then these thumping pianos and retro synths will make you glad again. But as a template for longevity, Last Night doesn't auger well. It may just be Moby's final fanfare.

Track List:

* Ooh Yeah
* I Love To Move In Here
* 257.Zero
* Everyday It's 1989
* Live For Tomorrow
* Alice
* Hyenas
* I'm In Love
* Disco Lies
* The Stars
* Degenerates
* Sweet Apocalypse
* Mothers Of The Night