Moby
Play
V2 Records / 1999

Techno DJ Moby is lucky; though an outspoken Christian, he gets ignored by the CCM industry because of his politics, which are decidedly liberal. This may be because his first big-selling album, Everything is Wrong, included two mini-essays, one advocating vegetarianism and the other blasting the religious right with a salvo of Scripture references. You gotta love him.

Moby's politics and his prophetic nature are peripheral to his music, though. While 1995's Everything is Wrong was charged with emotion, not all of that emotion was channeled into a jeremiad. The better tracks were unearthly movements designed to inspire worship ("Hymn," "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters"). But after Everything, Moby put out two lackluster albums, Animal Rights (a limp wanna-be industrial album) and I Like to Score (an average collection of soundtrack scores), that lacked the depth of Everything. It is only with his newest album, Play, that Moby has returned to further develop his compositions along the lines of the more spiritual stuff of Everything. And I'm glad he did.

Play isn't a "worship album." It's a techno album that happens to have many very reverent, worshipful moments. Sampling from several old-school blues musicians (Bessie Jones, Boy Blue, Vera Hall), Moby has melded them to his otherworldly beats to create Psalm-like moods. The result is a transcendent yet human album, coursing (as the blues does) through a wide range of emotion.

The regularity of rural blues lends itself well to being sampled and looped. And Moby has a master's instinct for incorporating the organic, scratchy recordings into his sharp, polished urban sounds. "Honey," for example, is based on the repetition of three lines from the Bessie Smith song "Sometimes," for three minutes, and still Moby expertly develops an ever-changing, yet somehow regular, beat around it. The same is true of "Find my Baby," which begins with a stripped-down vocal and crescendos to an exuberant dance number.

Moby isn't stuck in the past, though. He's well aware that today's blues still gets sung in the ghettos, and his hip-hop tributes, "Bodyrock" and "South side," are evidence of that. And not all of the songs are reworkings of old blues numbers; one of the best aspects of Play is the fact that over half of it is trademark Moby -- ethereal, piano-driven loops ("Rushing") and driving dance music ("Machete"). The moods of both the traditional Moby material and the gospel/blues montages flow in and out of each other seamlessly, so that Play comes off like an album-long composition.

The best moments of the album are the songs composed around old gospel loops, like "Why does my heart feel so bad," a melancholy nod to Psalm 43, and "Natural Blues," a lonely lamentation centered on the repeated lyric "nobody knows my trouble with God." In songs like this Moby shines, for while the sampled vocalists are mourning their troubles, the DJ is building beats that transform their mourning into dancing.

And that dancing is what ultimately sets the tone for the whole album. Unlike the stuff that comes out of Nashville, which tends to lack emotional and intellectual credibility, Moby's music actually functions like the Psalms, not ignoring the human condition, but at the same time drawing itself upward, to Christ, above and beyond, where even the tired, ragged souls who sing the blues can dance for joy.

-John Paul Davis

Over The Rhine
Good Dog Bad Bog / The Home Recordings
Back Porch/ Virgin/2000reissue [1996]

Touted by many self-described rhinelanders as their favorite OtR release, Good Dog Bad Dog was once rare enough to be only found at tour merch tables and fan club catalogues. The recent artist-friendly record deal secured by the band with fledgling Back Porch Records (Virgin) allowed this musical gem to see the light of day.

This is an amazing disk. Dynamically, artistically, lyrically and compositionally strong. But the true feat is that this 12-song CD was recorded largely in the third-story bedroom of Over The Rhine's Linford Detweiler. The lineup reflects the band's 1996 membership: Detweiler (piano, bass, and more), Bergquist (vocals, guitar and more), Ric Hordinski (guitars), and Brian Kelley (drums), with rapturous cello arrangements by Norman Johns.

All I Need is Everything, The Seahorse, and Poughkeepsie all stand out as beautiful examples of the band's consistent attention to artistry and emotive music.

-Paul Soupiset

The Innocence Mission
Birds of My Neighborhood
Kneeling Elephant / RCA/1999

It had been far, far too long between records from Pennsylvania's The Innocence Mission, but all that changed this past August. Their new disk, Birds of My Neighborhood, may be their strongest yet. With the band pared down to a trio -- they no longer have any drums or percussion in the line up -- the new disk has an uncommonly warm and intimate feel. Continuing through the progression from electric atmospherics to acoustic warmth which can easily be tracked from their self-titled debut through Umbrella and Glow, Birds... is a nearly purely acoustic disk with lead guitar man Don Peris putting away the signature tones of his vintage Gretsch in favor of a simpler approach, with accomplished bass man Mike Bitts performing dominantly on an acoustic upright and lead vocalist Karen Peris contributing some simple piano parts plus some secondary guitar and bass.

As with any Innocence Mission project the true star here is the stellar writing and exceptional vocals of Karen Peris. Peris is the poet laureate of the everyday, somehow able to find a true sense of wonder and art in the commonplace. The prime example of this is found in the album's first single, "The Lakes of Canada":

Look for me another day.
I feel that I could change,
I feel that I could change.
There's a sudden joy that's like
a fish, a moving light;
I thought I saw it
rowing on the lakes of Canada

Oh laughing man, what have you won?
Don't tell me what cannot be done.
My little mouth, my winter lungs,
don't tell me what can't be done.
Walking in the circle of a flashlight
someone starts to sing, to join in.

Talk of loneliness in quiet voices.
I am shy but you can reach me.
Rowing on the lakes of Canada,
rowing on the lakes of Canada.

Also weaving its way into the mix are several subtle allusions to the band's Christian faith in tracks such as "You Are the Light" and "Birdless." Peris's voice has a sense of childlike wonder throughout that matches the music perfectly and at times calls to mind the work of Julie Miller, Natalie Merchant and Victoria Williams.

The perfect mix of art and intimacy, Birds of My Neighborhood is an unqualified triumph for The Innocence Mission. An exceptional record.

-I.M. Review © and provided courtesy JJT @ truetunes.com -- by Todd Brown.