Q The Music Club

Gig Review

Moby played an eclectic mix of tracks voted for by you. There were songs from new album Wait For Me as well as classic Moby and some interesting covers at Sony Ericsson Presents Q The Music Club Live at the Hard Rock Cafe on November 16, 2009.

It was a crowded Hard Rock Cafe for yet another Sony Ericsson Presents Q The Music Club Live when the world's most amiable techno-loving vegan, Moby walked on stage to a warm welcome.

It was to be a gig of something old, something borrowed and something new tonight. As well as being super intimate, the setlist was selected by Q Readers...

But that was all to come, for now he opened with a trio of more recent songs, Shot In The Back Of The Head, One Time We Lived and Pale Horses from recent album Wait For Me. Wait For Me is billed as more of a return to Moby's roots, something he reinforced before One Time We Lived, commenting the song was "clearly a product of someone who listened to too much Joy Division when they were younger".

Time for some classic early noughties Moby next, Porcelain from Play, an album that recieved an initially muted response but went on to sell over 10 million copies worldwide.

Anyone still in any doubt as to Moby's enthusiasm for that seminal Manchester band was put out of their misery with his first cover of the night, New Dawn Fades complemented with a slightly fuzzed electric guitar and Moby recounting his time touring with New Order and the wonderfully surreal moment where he got to play a song with messrs. Hook and Sumner, "my teenage self would've been mindblown".

After quickly playing one of his own songs for vocalist Kelli Scarr to sing, Moby joined in and they preceded to play In This World again with male and female vocals, complementing and strengthening the somewhat unexpected songs second rendition.

We were then back in the early noughties territory with Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad, with the infectious melody causing most of the by now highly excited audience to join in but in no way drowning out another fine, ultra-bluesy female vocal.

Adding to the eclectic stew of the evening it was back to guitar slinging, punk inspired Moby for the Mission Of Burma classic Revolver, as you do, before rounding off the main set with the stunning single from his latest album, Mistake, Natural Blues and Lift Me Up.

Encore's can sometimes seem like a bit of a charade, especially in a venue so small and Moby was having none of that, pointing out the silliness of "us waiting over there standing behind the curtain", briefly pausing where the ritual walk off-stage would've been before launching in to Ring Of Fire and Feeling So Real (two songs I never thought I'd hear side by side in a club, never mind at a gig!).

He then finished the show with the mesmeric Honey, encouraged and joined by the whole crowd, more eclecticism with Neil Young's Helpless, before delivering an emphatic Go asking everyone to imagine they were in a field... unusual, but yet again it seemed to work.

From the solemnity of trance and blues to punk/post-punk and now ravey techno, Moby had pretty much ticked all the boxes. Clocking in at 1 hour 45, one of the longest Q The Music Club sets as well as the most eclectic thus far. John Mayer's got his work cut out for him in two weeks time...