Choice cuts from Animal Rights
April 18th, 2009 by Flint
The recent Moby announcement and the sample song the man gave us got me into a small Moby kick and especially dwell into the man’s melancholy moodpieces – the sort of material that the upcoming Wait for Me is supposed to be composed of. He’s always been great at them as its where his combined genius in both melody hooks and atmosphere frolic together. It left me wanting to do an update of some of my favourite melancholy pieces of him as a little drum-up for the new album, preferably something overlooked. Then I thought about featuring a certain album of his in the 12 overlooked pieces of awesome article series but a problem arose: Animal Rights, an album where some of his most heartbreaking melodic work exists, is by no means awesome. In fact, it’s a very, very awkward album.
You see, Animal Rights is infamous for its abrupt style switch. After gaining ground in the club dance scene and scoring a couple of small hits as an electronic music wizard, Moby decided to randomly alienate himself from that world and return to his punk rock roots. Animal Rights is a vicious and angsty 50-minute collection of harsh guitar tones, raging punk ravaging and extended guitar noise suites. What might somehow work is that Moby doesn’t have the charisma to pull off the angry man routine and his songwriting skills do not extended on hardcore guitar rock, making the album sound like a long and utterly ridiculous tantrum attack. It has some value as an album to put on while angsting and hating on the world but even then its length and stuff like the 10-minute “Face It” still end up sounding more daft than relatable frustration. It’s been titled as one of the “classic failed albums” in places and quite frankly, it’s a title it deserves.
But amidst the guitar thrashing and overly long punk rock escapades lies a couple of the man’s saddest, most anguished melodic pieces that end up being completely unspoken because of the album they ended up being on.
To be exact, there are 3-4 moments during the album where this occurs. The album is bookended by two acoustic laments, the first one catching you off guard and preparing you for a mood whiplash surprise when it quickly turns into the album’s more usual fare on the second track, and the latter one making you realise it’s just a case of artistic bookending. Both “Now I Let It Go” and “Love Song for My Mom” are instrumental acoustic guitar pieces, backed by sorrowful strings – not like the synthy trademark MobyStrings that pop up on every single album by the artist after this one, but actual instruments – that sound hopelessly sad and utterly defeated. While “Now I Let It Go” is only a beautiful intro to an otherwise chaotic album, “Love Song for My Mom” is a piece that works perfectly in its own right as well as a tearful conclusion to the album’s rage.
However, the album’s greatest moment and one of Moby’s top 10 songs in general, a song I’ve meant to make a separate update here so many times, appears as its penultimate moment, as a prelude to Love Song’s teary ending. “Living” is a 7-minute suite that starts quickly and ends completely abruptly in a way that makes you think the recording tape ran out mid-way through, and is composed of a short electric guitar melody passage that loops on and on throughout the entire seven minutes as a patient drum section backs it up. During those seven minutes, its background grows in a deceivingly subtle way. A piano appears so stealthily you would’ve imagined it had always been there, beginning to build its presence and taking a larger emphasis on the melodic scene as the track progresses; a simple bass figure starts halfway through to give additional power; the quiet and melancholy strings in the back sing their lament in the background and quietly build upon a climax. Finally after several minutes the song explodes – the drums crash and the various instruments grow louder, and yet the key focus of the song continues to be the lone signature guitar riff. Living’s a vaguely post-rock-esque, minimal yet detailed and terribly affectionate moment of clarity and beauty that grows into an epic finale. And yet it’s buried on Moby’s most infamous album and never sees the light of day.
The borderline case that creates that ‘-4′ a few paragraphs ago is called “Say It’s All Mine”. During verses it’s one of Moby’s best rock moments, which is saying something considering he’s always been very hit-and-miss whenever he rocks. It’s not the sort of RAGHGGH RAGHHHG punk-inspired trashy thingy most of Animal Rights is, but takes a more melodic and sad route rather than an angry one. Moby actually sounds great as a vocalist in it, his emotionless tone singing on top of a highly melancholy and slowly driven backing that gives a clear impression of someone who’s lost all hope and is going through a rough introspective phase. The atmosphere is brilliant, the guitar melody is excellent, it’s shooting to be one of the album’s very best moments… and then the chorus kicks in where the song reverts back to the usual Animal Rights style, creating a gigantic whiplash not only in mood but quality. In the hands of someone with the charisma or skills to pull off a rageshouty break it might sound great but now the sorrowful tone of the song is completely broken with a quick temper tantrum.
These songs played through my head constantly whenever I read Moby talking about the direction of Wait for Me. While “Shot in the Back of the Head” isn’t exactly similar to the personal, sorrowful moments he’s written before, I 1) still love the song and 2) truly hope that the album will offer us gems like the hidden stars of the otherwise rather wonky Animal Rights. In the meantime, let’s bring a few of these songs to the limelight where they belong.
MP3: Living
MP3: Love Song for My Mom
Tags: Moby