The new album, "Hotel", continues in Moby's tradition of making beautifully eclectic records. It runs the gamut from quintessential ("Hotel intro", "Homeward Angel") to big-chorus stadium anthems ("Spiders", "Lift Me Up") to straight-forward electro-disco ("Very") to ballads ("Forever") to new-wave ("Where You End"), and everything in between.Pop music, with a flow If you do some digging on this album, you should find that almost every publication panned it, despite its decent record sales. It's often interesting when critics don't like an album, but lots of *real people* do. Inevitably, sometimes it's the public's water-downed tastes, but occasionally it's the critics' pretentiousness and self-indulgence. Regarding Hotel, I suspect it's the latter. In fact, most of these negative reviews consist of harsh personal jabs towards Moby. You get the impression that these critics want Moby to make albums specifically for them; fortunately, Moby hasn't. To me, Hotel makes a lot of sense. In relation to his best past music, the big change with Hotel is that it's essentially more of rock/pop album, often with the synths remaining in the background. But in spite of this superficial shift, I find that some (not all) of the same elements that originally drew me to his earlier work (from "Everything" to "18") are present here. The music often has a similar effect on me as his past music: It's somewhat introspective and bittersweet but still life-affirming; none of its emotions are simply distinctly happy or sad, they're more real. Likewise, all the songs are still impeccably produced, and the best songs have a similar structure as his electronic material: Numbers like "Slipping Away", "Spiders", and "Lift me Up" almost have a linear cut-and-paste feel. At times this does make for an awkward pop-song verse/chorus structure, as many songs seem more like choruses with filler verses. But a great amount of attention is given to the transitions between parts of a song; similar to the different pieces of his great song "Feeling so Real", but less *out there*. The production feels clean and impersonal, but in the same way that some great electronic music feels clean and impersonal. Vocals and lyrics are used as instruments, along with strings and subtle shifts to push the songs forward. It feels like pop music, but what distinguishes it and makes it great Moby is the focus is on the overall flow; this is best done on "Slipping Away". At its worst some songs do feel very simplistic (especially "Beautiful") or uninspired (maybe "Where You End" or "Forever"). But there's enough variety on the album to prevent it from getting in a rut. Overall, many songs could use a lot more complexity, but I'm still endlessly intrigued by Hotel, and I'm curious about where Moby will go from here. Did I mention that it's also his catchiest album?
