Moby - Innocents Review

rating: 2

What album leaves you so relaxed that you're virtually horizontal? What album leaves you feeling hopeful right after the first track? What album leaves you feeling dissatisfied and irritated after listening to an album for over an hour and thinking, "Is that really it?" Well, Moby can answer all of those questions with his latest album Innocents. I was really looking forward to hearing this album after recently listening to his collector's album "Go: The Very Best of Moby." This Best Of includes my favourite track "Honey". However apart from a few tracks Innocents really lacks substance, fluidity and is surprisingly quite boring. As soon as the first track, "Everything Rises", comes to a close you are left feeling out of breath from its climatic end, something we don't really hear in the rest of the album. Another aspect that puts me off about this album is the few choice lyrics that are heard in the second track "A Case For Shame". Within the first minute of the track we hear "cut off your nose to spite your face, slowly send your palms away". Sorry what? This makes no sense what so ever. I'm usually a big fan of choice lyrics but they have to make some sort of sense, which this track definitely doesn't, very off-putting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3ZDqe5j4q8 One of the most popular tracks of this album was "The Perfect Life" (Track 5) which was used in its advertising campaign that was initially used to hype up the album suggesting that it was one of many brilliant tracks. Far from it, apart from two tracks that stick out as being quite enjoyable to listen to, the rest are very slow paced and quite uncomfortable to hear, this was not resembled in the adverts. Its reminiscent of terrible movies that had awesome trailers, when they've only shown the best bits. Now we're are left feeling cheated. There are some redeeming qualities of the album but they're in very short supply. One of the best standouts has to be "Almost Home" (Track 3). The mood of the track starts off as being very relaxed and distant which runs throughout and the choice of featuring Damien Jurado was a perfect one, the sounds that he is able to produce are perfect by creating notes where his pitch surpasses that of the backing music making him stand out and naturally harmonising with the music. The lyrics are simple and elegant and gives the effect of loss or separation, something that is sad yet still sounding sweet. The music played underneath Damien Jurado's singing is very simple in beats of two but the stringed chorus played over those two beats uplifts the song. A very nice song overall. The album consists of 12 tracks and can be bought on iTunes for the reasonable price of £7.99. Over half of the album includes featuring artists such as Skylar Grey, Inyang Bassey and Cold Specks. Overall, with all the hype that this album has got it is a big disappointment and it isn't really worth buying it.