Moby's controversial strategy of licensing the hell out of 1999's Play proved, not surprisingly, something of a devil's bargain. After years of hard work on the club scene and as a cult crossover star, Play was the big payoff and big payday all wrapped up in one. But the downside was that Moby's sudden ubiquity, and the seeming effortlessness with which Play proliferated, downgraded the Moby brand. The guy actually accomplished quite a bit creatively before he became a commercial force, but making it look easy made a lot of detractors think it actually was.

Still, at the same time, there may be something to that in light of Moby's post-Play output. Given that Moby has total autonomy, both creatively and financially, it's disappointing that the past several years have seen him do little in the studio to take advantage of freedoms many artists would kill for-- all while dozens of boundary-pushing DJs and producers circulate in and out of fashion. Maybe Moby sensed it himself, and, rejecting complacency, set himself some ambitious goals with Last Night, a concept album that serves as a nostalgic trip down clubland lane. This being Moby, it even comes with an explicit statement of purpose. "It's me trying to take 25 years of going out in NYC and condensing it into a 65-minute record. It's also trying to condense an eight-hour night into just over an hour of music."

Distilling 25 years of material and an eight-hour experience into a 60-minute record is no small feat, and to Moby's credit Last Night isn't a totally pedantic drag. Moby's never been shy about tipping his hand when it comes to his influences, and returning to dance music for inspiration makes perfect sense at this point in his career-- especially after the relatively uninspired Hotel and Baby Monkey (recorded as Voodoo Child, his last stab at a "straight" dance record). But there's "inspired" and then there's inspired. Compared to (for example) Hercules & Love Affair's own recent stroll through New York's varied club history, the relatively indifferent grooves on Last Night don't quite cut it. These may be songs designed to make you move but the results are only intermittently rousing.

"Ooh Yeah" and "I Love to Move in Here" (featuring the Cold Crush Brothers' Grandmaster Caz) start the album out with cool (as in cold) disco diva vocals and hip-house, respectively. Retro cred established, the disc then moves into peppier territory with "257.zero". The track doesn't really go anywhere, but it still feels like it could go on longer than three and a half minutes. "Everyday It's 1989", on the other hand, so perfectly encapsulates the spirit of rave that it might as well be drawn from a comp circa that titular year. If Moby wanted to distill that hour further down to just a single track, it would be this one.

The track's also a reminder of Moby's prowess as a producer, but unfortunately too much of Last Night stresses his recent bona fides as master of the middle of the road. The hip-hop spiced single "Alice" (featuring members of Nigeria's 419 Squad) rides a moody subterranean bass but ends pretty much where it begins. "Hyenas" is all swoon and no drama. "Disco Lies" and "Stars" (anthems, both) are more perfect late-80s/early-90s club recreations that nonetheless miss an opportunity to mix (or at least bridge) the past with the present. Somewhere in the middle are tracks like "Live for Tomorrow" and "I'm in Love", sexy, moody things that are equal parts bedroom lures and hints at the beckoning chill-out room.

That chill-out atmosphere kicks in for the album's final stretch, gloomy tracks such as the woozy trip-hop of "Degenerates" or the circular, minor key dirge "Mothers of the Night" that act as the big comedown after the implied narrative's night on the town. By dedicating such a big hunk of the album to the early morning, however, the lasting vibe conveyed by the record is not euphoric or even nostalgic, but oddly elegiac. In the end, lost amidst the faithfully reproduced house piano progressions and familiar melodies is anything signaling that those epiphany-filled late nights were actually, you know, fun. If Moby's glory days were anything like this, Last Night never quite makes an entirely convincing argument why anyone would ever want to go back.