'Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt': Moby returns to his roots

Moby's 15th album has a reverent but rubbery grooving vibe. Photo: AFP

Moby

Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt

Mute

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After the punkish rush of his recent albums with the Void Pacific Choir — 2016’s These Systems Are Failing, and 2017’s More Fast Songs About The Apocalypse — Moby returns to his gospel-influenced, trip-hoppy roots with his 15th record.

That seems simple, the idea of an artiste returning to his past. But with Moby’s output in the 2000s, returning – rather than innovating as he did in the ’90s — has become de rigueur. Moby’s been there, done that twice over, literally.

The overall tone and tremor of Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt? Listen to his mega-selling, soft-hop Play. The holy, elegiac roll of new music such as The Ceremony Of Innocence and Welcome To Hard Times have the reverent but rubbery grooving vibe of Play.

Moby’s new Like A Motherless Child, a reworking of the traditional work song of the slavery-era Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child is gorgeous, plaintive and Play-prayerful. That would be lousy, stupid, and copy-cattish if not for the fact that Moby always forwards his aesthetic by fashioning a mean and memorable melody, a riveting imaginative pulse and a vocal line — his flat-lining tone, along with soulful guests such as Raquel Rodriguez — that tugs on your tear ducts.

So maybe Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt isn’t an epiphany when it comes to Moby’s catalogue. Luckily, its tunes and gospel comforts are. — A.D. Amorosi/The Philadelphia Inquirer/Tribune News Service