Moby at the St James

Reviewed by RUSSELL BAILLIE

At one point - after throwing his delicate self into a cover of Iggy and the Stooges' I Wanna Be Your Dog - Moby wondered aloud what any rock critics in the audience might think of him doing it.

Such commentators, he said, usually pegged him as esoteric and introverted.

"Look at me," he seemed to say, while thrashing out Dog and later Led Zep's Whole Lotta Love - "I'm a fun guy who can rock too." Well yes, you can. But must you?

This, after all, was frequent tourist Moby's first playing visit since last year's release of 18, generally pegged as the disappointing follow-up to his breakthrough album Play.

But if this was a chance to convince us - a more modest turnout than he's had on past visits - that there was something more to the new songs, the opportunity was squandered with a set still largely relying on Play's over-familiar mix of beats and cut'n'paste blues samples.

That said, one highlight of the show was 18's lead single We Are All Made of Stars (inspired by his continuing enthusiasm for quantum physics, he said) which, with its vintage-Bowie guitar haze, neatly achieved lift-off. Even if, as my mate observed, it also sounds like an old Chills' song.

But to use some more basic physics, it seems that Moby has gone off the boil. He's still energetic, darting about the stage like a mad thing throughout, swapping guitar for congas for keyboards for turntables and back again.

Sometimes there was good reason for his enthusiasm, especially on the hip-hop-shaped Bodyrock and just about every time English backing singer Diane Charlemagne let rip, substituting or augmenting all those voices from the albums.

But between Moby's various pronouncements - predictably apologising for George W. Bush, the cheeky political scamp - and some of those best-before-date songs, it was a show that went a bit scatty around the edges. He's still esoteric (there, we said it), but only in a playing-it-safe kind of way.