Moby: Animal Rights

Written by Mat Mckenzie

last updated 2009-05-30 02:01 CET

Moby fans will need a strong stomach for this one. I don't think I will be alone in struggling to enjoy Animal Rights. Lovers of electronic music and Moby's best selling album Play should probably just avoid it.

Music critique

Artist: Moby

Album: Animal Rights

Playtime: 01:12:53
Record label: Elektra
Released: 1996

planet origo rating

I've always enjoyed the odd speculative purchase, especially if it's not too expensive and over the years I have become pretty adept at guessing if I will like something or not. The first clue is the artwork; if it's futuristic or a scene of natural beauty that often goes with techno or ambient. If the track titles involve death or violence it's likely to be hate filled and something I avoid like the plague. The final clue is the label. As with artists, over a period of time you get to know which ones normally deliver the goods

There are of course exceptions to the rule and occasionally you get landed with a dud, but usually artists and groups market their music to match their audience's expectations. I do get irritated when groups decide to market their albums with futuristic sci-fi imagery for example, then when you stick the album on you are greeted with a screaming vocal and grungy guitars. Seems pointless to me, you've just missed your first marketing opportunity.

Moby certainly falls into the wildcard category. He seems to have three musical personalities. In the early days he was without a doubt a raver and he returns to his roots sometimes to keep his hand in, so to speak. The other two personalities are fairly split. I think the signature sound of his epic Play album takes the forefront but in the background is always some kind of guitar sound.

God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters, Go (Woodtick Mix) and First Cool Hive represent the pinnacle of his early achievements to me, and album wise you can't deny the exceptional quality of Play. 18 wasn't a bad album and has some great singles on it but did sound rather like Play part 2. That leads me onto the reason for this review, the album Animal Rights. I'm always interested in new material by Moby and true to form I bought a few CD singles off the album when it came out just to see what they were like.

I struggled to find anything I liked on them; it was loud guitar music and very un-Moby like to my ears, so with vast quantities of other great music still to buy I went with my gut feeling and gave this album a wide berth. When this album recently turned up on my review pile, my expectations weren't high. Barely five minutes later, I could confirm that my gut instincts remain true! If I'm pushed for time I tend to review albums in stages. A quick flick through of the first few bars of each track is usually enough to tell me if it's good, bad or indifferent. It wasn't a big surprise for me to find that what I heard was not good. Not good at all...

Second and third listens didn't improve things – in fact it was quite a chore to get through it. A large majority of the album is loud guitar music with unpleasant abrasive even, vocals shouted by Moby. There's a few tracks where they take the more expected Moby format but they seem out of place on the album and aren't strong enough to warrant buying the album "just for the good tracks".

I actually only enjoyed three tracks on the album. The first being the opening track Now I Let It Go which is an excellent, gentle acoustic string led piece with a very melancholic vibe, but only a mere two minutes long. It should set the tone for the album but instead it presumably shows some kind of deep contrast between Moby having a good day and a bad day, because all that follows afterwards are tracks of essentially fast or slow paced hate filled rage, until you get to the final two tracks. It's all well and good to say an artist is varied and not a one trick pony but often the reason people like an artist is because of their most popular style. Changing tack this radically is a gamble and in this case one which is likely to turn off regular fans.

Living is a nice plodding guitar led instrumental track, devoid of any signature vocal samples but definitely more Moby than the rest of the album and definitely enjoyable.

Love Song For My Mom completes the album essentially the way the album started. I do like it when albums do that, the recurring theme tends to finish off the album nicely though in this case is rather pointless as the rest of the album is nothing like it.

I feel this album is out of character and will in my view only appeal to Moby completists or closet rock or grunge fans. Guitar fans may well love it but I refer back to my previous comment; as this is so out of character they will be expecting another album like Play and probably never even know about this album anyway, so all it will serve to do is lose sales from regular fans. To put my comments into context, it's worth noting that my personal taste is electronic music not guitar music and I have discussed this album with people who love a good racket and they seem to think the album isn't bad at all.

I don't however think I will be alone in struggling to enjoy this album. Lovers of electronic music and Moby's best selling album Play will be unlikely to go for this and in my view should probably just avoid it or at least make sure they have listened to clips online before buying.