Day 55: Moby – Play

Album cover courtesy of Mute Records

I was going on a little autumnal Saturday evening drive around my surrounding areas and I wanted some pleasant electronic dance music to listen to. I tried to go for the Chemical Brothers, but that was just not the right vibe. One of my old bosses played them from the speakers at work, so I think I just associate them with labour – not relaxing or Saturday-appropriate, so I settled for a bit of Moby instead.

Moby used to play in underground punk bands during the ‘80s, but by the 1990s, he had pivoted to electronic dance music. In 1996, he decided to pivot back to his punk rock roots and he released his fourth album, Animal Rights, which was so badly received that Moby considered quitting music altogether. It was panned by both critics and fans, and received so badly that he said people would pelt things at him when he was on stage, if there even was an audience.

Positive reactions to Animal Rights from other musicians spurred him on to continue making music, but playing to mostly empty rooms had demoralised him. He finished his fifth album Play in 1997, and he says he was anticipating the reception to be as bad as it was to Animal Rights.

He says that before Play was released, he sat on a swing by himself in a park and thought, “When this record comes out, it will be the end of my career. I should start thinking about what else I can do.” He settled on going back to school and study architecture.

Luckily, Moby was wrong. Play wasn’t an immediate commercial hit, but it became a huge success after Moby licensed all of the songs to appear in TV shows, films and commercials. Ten months after its release, it went to number one in the UK charts. The album’s prevalence in entertainment is probably why I know so many of the songs – I’m not sure if I’ve sat down to listen to Play in its entirety, at least not recently enough for me to remember it, but so many of them sound at the very least a little bit familiar.

From the downtempo elements of the songs to Moby’s quiet talk-singing, nothing about this record is particularly jolly. But despite the melancholia, there’s still something very comforting about it. Moby builds this soundscape that you just want to melt into. It’s a bit sad and vulnerable but it’s not tense or depressing – it’s maybe the vulnerability or the earnestness of it that still makes it such a pleasure to listen to.

Play is a solid 8/10. I’ve not got too much poetic to wax about it today, but if you’re looking for an album to drive around to, Play is it.