Moby: "Pale Horses"

Music on Sunday @ The Reaction

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I like Moby. A lot.

Emerging from his roots on the club scene, Play (1999) and 18 (2002) were great (and justifiably celebrated) breakthrough albums that took his ambient, chill-out sound mainstream, pop electronica but with such amazing depth and such transcendent feeling that it stands apart, at least to me, from anything else of its kind.

His latest album, Destroyed (2011), is the latest addition to my iPod. It's really good, if somewhat derivative and not quite at the level of his best work. And his best work, I think, is Wait For Me (2009), less pop than Play but in a way the epitome of everything Moby is about as an artist, an artist at the very peak of his talents.

It isn't often that I listen to an album all the way through for the first time and without reservation consider it a masterpiece. I'm not talking about Sgt. Pepper's or Dark Side, just about new albums that have come out in recent years. Green Day's American Idiot comes to mind, as does Portishead's Third. I'd also say God is an Astronaut's All is Violent, All is Bright, and maybe Vienna Teng's Dreaming Through the Noise and Thea Gilmore's Avalanche. (You get the point. I'm sure you have your own list.)

Well, Wait For Me belongs in that exclusive category. It's an incredible album, and if you're not familiar with it, I recommend it highly. One of its best songs is "Pale Horses." Here's the video. Enjoy.