Everything Is Wrong

by Ned Raggett For some it was the pinnacle of his career, for others one of a continued string of triumphs (others doubtless cared not at all, thinking somehow that synth and dancebeats equalled musical insincerity, but such is life). Regardless of how one takes it, Everything Is Wrong shows Moby at a definite high point, and if some tracks are much more memorable and involved than others, those successes alone justify the attention and hype he received in his earliest days. Even more noteworthy is that for all that the album is a definite product of time and place, namely 1994-1995, it stands up to further listens for all the further changes in dance since. Having already made his mark with tracks like "Go," "Next Is the E," and "Move," on Everything Is Wrong Moby attempted to balance out the creation of an album in a complete, single-unit sense with his knack for immediately catchy singles. On the latter point he succeeds perfectly, with the frenetic, jungle-inspired anthemic diva showcase "Feeling So Real" (punctuated just so with English-inspired MC breaks) and the giddily sweet pop-minded house of "Everytime You Touch Me" utterly irresistible. Hints of future changes crop up with the speed metal-via-Ministry reworking of Move EP's "All That I Need Is to Be Loved," but the similarly minded blues/thrash of "What Love" forecasts the ham-handed slogs of Animal Rights all too well. Meanwhile, the string-touched "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters" is a self-consciously beautiful, cinematic meditation on spiritual power that in lesser hands might be cheese but comes across here as truly affecting. If there's an ace in the hole, it's the inspired recruiting of former Hugo Largo vocalist Mimi Goese, who had spent the early '90s well out of the public eye. Her turns on "Into the Blue" and especially the haunting, evocative album-closer "When It's Cold I'd Like to Die" bring out in the best in both musicians.