Listen to excerpts here:

"I Love To Move In Here"

"Every Day It's 1989"

"Disco Lies"

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Moby : Last Night
released on Mute
reviewed by Gaspar Oliveira for GBH.tv

At this point in his career, Moby's playing with house money. He's won a gajillion Grammys, DJed and performed all over the world, and to top it all off he's a millionaire many times over; from a creative standpoint, he's entitled to do pretty much whatever he wants. But after his last two records, 18 and Hotel, got smacked around by critics, the man known to the IRS as Richard Hall spent some time away from the spotlight. So much time, in fact, that some began to speculate that Moby had called it quits. The release of Go - The Very Best of Moby back in 2006 didn't help matters, either.

But it turns out Moby spent that time getting his groove back, and Last Night, his first release on electronic music juggernaut Mute, is filled with the swagger of an artist stepping onstage for an encore. Moby's billed Last Night as "a very eclectic dance record," and for the most part, it is. The majority of Moby's fans probably don't know much about his beginnings as a house producer, but this album's strongest tracks will have people scrambling to acquaint themselves with his back catalog. Tracks like "Every Day It's 1989," The Stars," and "Disco Lies" swell with house-y pride, all big diva vocals, liberated piano momentum and quick samples, and the funky guitars and keyboards on "Ooh Yeah" and "I Love to Move in Here" create some of the best moments Moby's ever committed to tape. But where Moby's earlier house tracks were built for mixing, often running six or seven minutes long, the tracks found here are shaped like pop songs. Only three tracks of 15 run over the five minute mark, and each puts the extra time to good use.

In addition to the house influence mentioned above, Last Night is colored by several other electronic music genres: trip hop colors tracks like "Alice" and "Hyenas", and "257.zero" is techno through and through. But this variety doesn't compromise Last Night's cohesiveness. Moby's recent penchant for keyboard strings runs through this album from start to finish, adding emotional shade and weight in the most unexpected of places. As the album progresses, a grand melancholy begins to set in, and the mood that begins the album-closing title track is almost desolate. With Kudu's Sylvia Gordon on vocals, "Last Night" is heartbreaking, filled with synthy chills for the first half. After a few moments of silence, the song is reprised by a jazz combo, the perfect sound of nighttime solitude on the streets of New York.

Last Night's the kind of album few artists could pull off. In part, you have to be certain that it doesn't matter if you succeed or not just to have a chance of getting it right. Lucky for us, that seems to be something Moby knows all too well.

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