Moby, O2 review - ebullient night of rave'n'rock'n'Johnny Cash

Sometimes a gig suddenly and completely elevates. Such is the case tonight when Moby, on his first UK tour in 12 years, plays “Extreme Ways”, his 2002 anthem for hedonism and its desperate consequences. What has been an adequately entertaining night blossoms into something more riveting. The 20,000-strong O2 crowd, previously mostly seated, rise en masse, move and sing along. The place is a-buzz.

Perhaps this is because it’s the moment when Moby finally owns the stage. He is up front on guitar, delivering the song like a classic rock turn. Much of his multi-million-selling back catalogue, notably the breakout 1999 album Play, consists of rolling electronic breakbeats, symphonic synths and soulful vocal samples, the latter belted out tonight by singers Nadia Christine Duggin and Choklate. Until this point, Moby has played guitar and occasionally attacked a Juno synth, but he’s a bit background, self-effacing, going as far as to describe himself as the least talented person on-stage.

With “Extreme Ways” he suddenly inhabits the driven, urgent persona that made his name. Perhaps the crowd response is because it’s a plea from the heart. It feels personal. Moby borrowed an appropriate line from it - “Then it fell apart” – to title the second volume of his compulsive, ultra-candid autobiographies, rollercoaster rock’n’roll rides that descend into sleazy, self-hating decadence. Or perhaps it’s just because the song became the theme to the Jason Bourne film series. Whatever, it works. We now have belly-fire in the building.

Prior to this, there had been flickers and sparks, such as a bouncing, bluesey take on Play’s “Flower”. The band, including a violinist, cellist and keys player, all female, rock out like The Black Keys, while on rave anthem “Go”, Moby frantically plays congas. One of his loveliest songs, a slowie called “Almost Home”, doesn’t achieve the emotional heft of the original, which featured Damien Jurado’s broken falsetto. Duggin, clad in an amazing white bodysuit with fungal ruffs all round it, gives it a good gospel go but struggles to hold crowd attention.

The night’s support act, Lady Blackbird, resplendent under a white cotton wool cloud of hair, wearing a white piped Afro cape, appears for two songs. She has wired body-jewellery around her nose that concludes on either side with white feathers poking upwards about her eyes. She looks splendid and so is her rich voice, giving real welly to “Walk With Me”, a song Moby recalls Lou Reed and choreographer Bill T Jones waltzing to, acapella, in a deserted New York restaurant. And then she nails another Play smash, “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?”

Moby is an odd pop star; bald, retiring, diminutive, with scruffy white stubble. He even refers to himself as “a middle-aged golem”. But he’s also passionate and punk. He has “ANIMAL” and “RIGHTS” tattooed down each arm and “Vegan for Life” on his neck. He announces “My entire life is dedicated to working on behalf of animals,” and, indeed, all profits from this tour go to different related causes in each country, including, in the UK, Plant Based Universities and the Jane Goodall Institute. Unlike most musicians of his profile, it’s more than lip service, he puts his money where his mouth is. He also bigs up Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, stating that Trump’s election would spell global disaster.

The post-“Extreme Ways” set, then, comes fully alive. Wearing his violinist’s giant cowboy hat, which doesn’t quite fit, he delivers a rollicking, possibly off-the-cuff cover of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”, and ebullient takes on his last major hit single, 2006’s “Lift Me Up”, and a final Play whopper, “Natural Blues”. Then he tells us that, above all the other things he is a raver, referring back to his pre-Play career, a decade of Nineties club hits when, he reminds, he toured with The Prodigy Altern-8 and N-Joi. To prove the point, he slams home, sans band, with a final double-header, the manic proto-jungle of “Feeling So Real” and the demented hyper-speed “Thousand”, standing atop a podium for the latter, arms outstretched, lost in a blaze of smoke and blue light. Sorted.

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Below: Watch Moby and Damien Jurado perform "Almost Home" in the Fonda Theatre, Los Angeles, in 2014