illusionofjoy | Thank you, North Hills Taco Bell; Moby

This evening, joi_division and I headed up to the Best Buy in North Hills so that I could buy the latest disc from Moby and she could get Bloc Party's stateside debut. Beforehand, we stopped by the combination Taco Bell/Pizza Hut that is up there, but more on that later...

After initially listening to Moby's new album, Hotel, I have to say that the negative reviews make it out to be a worse album than it is. While the cover of New Order's "Temptation" should have been left on the editing room floor to be slept up and thrown away, the rest of the album is actually quite enjoyable. I will concede that this is not the Moby of yore who released a single that clocked in at 1,000 beats per minute simply because no one else had done it. Still, it is refreshing that he has shed his Play phase that, while pretty, should have lasted only for that album and not continued through "Play II," also known as 18.

The first thing one notices about this album is the number of guitars in it. At times, it almost sounds like Beck ("Dream About Me") or Michael Stipe ("Slipping Away") are in the studio. The second thing I noticed after one listen is that Moby seems to have found a favourite patch for his drum synth, which he was unwilling to part with for the duration of the Hotel sessions. Thirdly, I noticed that the instrumental compositions ubiquitous on previous releases are not to be found here. Save for one track, every song has lyrics. As with most Moby albums (and New Order albums, for that matter), the lyrics are not to be listened to closely, if the music is to be enjoyed. One knowing Moby only by his online journal would think that he could churn out wonderful yarns of polysyllabic prose but, alas, this has never been the case.

As I said previously, the negative reviews made this out to be a worse album than it is, but they weren't completely inaccurate. Songs like "Raining Again," "Beautiful," "Lift Me Up" (a dance floor scorcher, if ever I heard one), "Where You End," "Spiders," "Love Should" (a pretty ballad) and "Slipping Away" are the high points of the album - enjoyable, albeit, not particularly innovative. There are some real clunkers on this disc though - the aforementioned cover of New Order's "Temptation" being the most strident example. While Moby did a wonderful, energetic take of Mission To Burma's "That's When I Reach For My Revolver" on Animal Rights, his cover of "Temptation" is flaccid. Gone are the beats and tempo that made the original so engaging, replaced by a chillout track and a female lead vocalist, doing her best to draw the listers focus to the lyrics! Why Moby, of all people, would do this to a classic dance track is beyond me. I would have sooner expected Tori Amos, the queen of horrid cover renditions, to commit this musical crime. Meanwhile, songs like "Very" are uninspired and songs such as "I Like It" are cringe-worthy. Thank goodness for the "skip" button on the CD player or, for you children of the 21^st century, the ability to pick and choose which tracks you wish to rip into your iPods.

Overall, I think Hotel is a transitional album for Moby. He's never going to release another Everything Is Wrong nor should he have to. Furthermore, he seems to be done mining the platinum-friendly sounds of Play and 18. Hotel is an album that will probably be difficult for some people to like, but I suspect that it is merely a springboard towards another phase in Moby's artistic oeuvre. And, like Animal Rights, it does have some enjoyable songs. One just has to be willing to pick out the wheat from the chaff.

Now...

As I mentioned earlier, Joi and I went to the combination Taco Bell/Pizza Hut in North Hills before we purchased our respective albums. This was a horrible mistake! I implore anyone thinking of going to a Taco Bell in Pittsburgh to visit the one in Greentree or the one in Mt. Lebanon, but for the love of your gastric tract, do not eat at the one in North Hills!

You can all probably guess at what happened once Joi and I got home, but I will precede it with this: it is a bad sign from the get-go when your order is taken by a high school girl who obviously hates her life and doesn't give a shit about her minimum wage and there is no manager in sight. It is also a bad sign when one begins feeling ill only halfway through the meal. Finally, it is a bad sign when the bathroom looks like a Golgotha Shit Demon exploded inside of it. Joi and I won't be visiting this establishment again. My stomach still hurts!