Moby - Everything was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt

Moby

everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt

2018

Spotify

November 2016 was a rough time for Moby. The staunch environmentalist, and liberal supporter saw his candidate loose in rather dramatic fashion and it effected the guy big time. Many artists were more than a little triggered by the outcome of that election and it crept into their music. Moby however let it  overtake him, and feel into a spiral of the world is ending delusion. I've said this before but the shift in spirit was more evident in Electronic music more so than anywhere else. The songs became darker and more bleak, EDM began to fade because no one was really into making that music anymore, the spirit just left them. Moby is in the same boat. His big pop music is all but gone on this record, and so is any post-punk tendencies He may have. On this record He is really wrestling with  big ideas about conducting yourself in a world you see as failing, its about making dance music when you really don't want to dance. It really is the opposite of an album like Paramore's After Laughter where despair is replaced with hopeful brightness. Paramore was looking for a way to push through the depression where Moby feels more resigned to it. Yet the ambient environments He creates with these songs are so vivid and beautiful that you have to take notice, they just aren't all that fun. "Like a Motherless Child" is so overblown with a deep sadness that it feels almost silly. You have to push past these bumps in the road and be stronger, not allow an event almost totally out of your control define your whole year. 

"The Ceremony of Innocence" opens with Moby speak singing the line: " There was a dark, in all this/ There was a darkness I liked" which is poetic and could be a great shift change on an album but here it feels like more of the same whining that most of the album is populated with. The haunting violin on "The Tired and the Hurt" gives you this sense of being wronged, joining in on this cry fest but there is no real emotional release, just ruminating on what's wrong. If there were some build to a huge release this album would be so much better but, as it is it's 56 minutes of absolute downer shit. "Welcome to Hard Times" is so slow and such a slog that this late in the album it is hard to get through. Everything about this record drags, making it feel infinitely longer than it actually is. I mean all I really need to say is there is a song called "The Sorrow Tree" and it is just as sad as the title suggests. Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt is certianly well produced and sounds nice in your ears, but the subject matter and really the music in general is so weighed down with Moby's politics of being hurt that it's nearly impossible to by in. There is no subtlety, no spin just an album about a sad guy being sad which no one wants to hear when the stakes for Moby himself are so low. I can't even imagine this would work live, maybe just a bunch of people hanging around crying. It's hard to hate because the production is so well done and so immersive, but the sentiment and the vibe are off putting as all hell. Sorry for your loss Moby, but you gotta move on. 

4.0 out of 10