Moby is fascinated by the ‘airless and lifeless neutrality of so many man-made spaces’. Not that any of this fascination spills over into his music. No siree Bob. Not in the least. I couldn’t reject this notion more vociferously. Definitely not. I protest too much? Well okay, maybe Moby’s music does have a similarly ‘airless and lifeless neutrality’ about it – but then ambient always had and when Moby came over all ambient (somewhere between his rave euphoria and speed-metal dalliances, as on ‘Play’) there was something oddly disposable and dispassionate about his endeavours. Not unlike the hotel metaphor he uses, Moby checks in and checks out of public recognition with frightening momentum, inhabiting one musical habitat after another and leaving only his hair-shavings by way of a mark. Nobody quite cares who he is and nobody quite remembers him. It’s a condition compounded perhaps by his awkward intellectualism. “Why hotel?” his sleeve notes begin. But nobody asked him in the first place. Moby courts expectations of Moby more meticulously than we court those of him and it’s this freakish self-propulsion that keeps him from achieving orbit. Moby is too busy orbiting himself and his own mobiness.
Where ‘hotel’ does succeed, however, is precisely where the other albums succeeded. The songs are consummately produced, instantly hummable and beautifully melancholic. The minimal and effortless re-reading of New Order’s ‘Temptation’ may irk a few people and so will his continuing efforts to reproduce David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ in its entirety (‘Dream About Me’) but his ability gel totally disparate genres together into one broadly consistent whole for the most part passes muster. Sticking with his own taut and alien vocal rather than pulling in every session-vocalist under the sun has also paid-off nicely, providing as it does greater unity and character. And though Moby, the axe-wielding guitar hero of ‘Lift Me Up’ is a bit of a challenge mentally, it’s a Moby we manage to grow fond of album-wide. ‘Where You End’, ‘Dream About Me’, ‘Love Should’, ‘Forever’ and ‘Slipping Away’ are actually more akin to the playful, witty and elastic personality of The Magnetic Field’s Stephin Merritt than they are the androgynous, sickly old sour-puss Moby, and though never strictly sexy or for that matter, human exactly, it is a more intimate and warm persona.
Whether or not Moby is actually in on all the elevator, hotel lobby, disposable muzak gags the sleeve notes hint at is anyone’s guess, one thing is certain at least; with ‘Hotel’ Richard Melville Hall is trying hard to rewrite the punchline.