Moby: "Pale Horses"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I love Moby. I really do. I used to be into the whole ambient electronica thing, and I still am, sort of, but Moby, of course, is one artist who can't be labelled quite so easily. It's techno, it's pop, it's rock, it's... well, you know, it's whatever Moby wants it to be.

Play remains for me a seminal album, a defining album of a certain time in my life, a musical trip. 18 is also very good, as are Hotel, if somewhat meandering, and Last Night, a fascinating tour through the New York musical (club) scene, if, like Hotel, disappointing in terms of sales. (These are only his most recent albums. He did much more before Play turned him into a mainstream success, and much of his early, distinctly less commercial, music is wonderful, too.)

But Wait for Me... oh, yes. I downloaded it shortly after its release and remember vividly what I thought -- and felt -- upon first listening to it. A brilliant, mesmerizing masterpiece, perhaps the most thematically coherent work of Moby's career, it's one of those albums you just lose yourself in, an album that continues to reward with each listening. I feel it through my entire body, and it reaches into my soul. I can't even explain why. It just does. I find it deeply moving, and it takes me -- like some of Play and 18 -- to an astonishing emotional depth, a place where I am, and am compelled to be, open with myself about myself in a genuinely meaningful way.

Here is the video for "Pale Horses," one of the stand-out tracks (and there are many of them) on Wait for Me -- a beautiful video for a beautiful piece of music: