Moby returned to Poland after a long break. He had already performed here four times, most recently at Orange Warsaw Festival in 2011. This time, promoters managed to bring him back for a full-scale headline show rather than another festival appearance.
I was happy to hear the news. I have followed Moby’s career since Play, but had never seen him live. While his music has not offered many surprises in recent years - with one notable exception, the underrated 2018 album Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt, a record on the level of 18 - he remains in excellent live form. He proved it at Coachella in April, where he played a powerful set packed with turn-of-the-millennium hits. Natural Blues, featuring Jacob Lusk, will surely be remembered as one of the best performances of this year’s festival.
On August 4, Moby arrived at Letnia Scena Progresji without the Gabriels singer, but with an equally interesting lineup. Vocalists Nadia Christine Duggin and India Carney faithfully recreated the soul samples behind Moby’s biggest hits. They may have run slightly out of breath during Natural Blues, but Flower, combined with Find My Baby, sounded fantastic.
There was also Jonathan Nesvadba on keyboards, introduced by Moby as the tour’s musical director, and a string section that made Porcelain sound exactly as it should. During the tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of Play, Moby performed the song on guitar, and something was clearly missing. The support act was NEWSKIN, an electronic duo from Szczecin who released their debut album, RESONANCE, last year. They played a very enjoyable set that fitted perfectly with what the headliner delivered shortly afterwards.
Moby may have opened with the guitar-driven Bodyrock, but the concert and the new arrangements of several songs had a strongly dance-oriented character. Early in the set, we heard Go, dedicated to David Lynch, and Next Is the E, with a fragment of Eminem’s Without Me woven into it - two key songs from Moby’s techno era. Later tracks such as We Are All Made of Stars and Extreme Ways also carried plenty of club energy.
The setlist was constructed much like last year’s Oasis tour: no excursions into the later albums and no experiments. The tempo dropped here and there, as on Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?, and there was also a cover of David Bowie’s Heroes. Overall, however, it was still a classic greatest-hits show. For someone seeing Moby live for the first time, it was everything they could have asked for.
One of the biggest surprises was just how much energy Moby put into the performance. He spent the entire concert running from one side of the stage to the other, with a short break for a video presentation about Jane Goodall, the renowned British primatologist and animal welfare advocate. It was undoubtedly one of the most moving moments of the evening.
The whole concert was a huge positive surprise. For years, I have kept returning to Moby’s 2001 performance on Later… with Jools Holland. What I saw on Tuesday was not very different from that show. The setlist was similar, and the commitment was exactly the same. If Moby wanted to use this tour to remind a wider audience of what he can do, he could not have done it any better.