Everything Is Wrong was basically the ultra-serious version of Beastie Boys' albums like Check Your Head and Ill Communication, where it was anything-goes, experimenting with different genres, except put in a general electronica context, and then on top of that, the overall mood is one of…well…just look at the album title and cover. I usually keep political context out of these reviews, but it has to be mentioned here – Moby is vegan, and obviously believed that our entire society was an illusion – therefore, it’s the overriding theme of the disc, plain and simple. The problem I have with this is, he seems to be so angry and/or depressed that, one way or another, he cannot properly focus this energy to make this disc entertaining (forget about great), although at certain points it does get mildly interesting. We can roughly divvy up the tracks here into a few general areas – the up-tempo/electronica tracks, the ambient/chill/ballad tracks, and the rock tracks. Out of all of these, the most interesting by far are the rock tracks, but there’s only two of these, the vague hair-metal of “All That I Need Is to Be Loved” and the really garbled (in a cool way) blues-thrasher “What Love”. Moby himself does the vocals on both tracks and sounds awkward, and the overall vibe is very off-the-cuff, but other than that, they work reasonably OK, as if somehow you get the feeling this is the kind of music that comes more natural to him. The up-tempo tracks take up most of the first part of disc. I’m not going to name all of them, but the most notable one probably is “Feeling So Real”, which is so up-tempo it sounds like it should be mashed up with Benny Hill chase videos – that’s how ridiculous it gets. Otherwise, Moby’s up-tempo stuff, at this stage, is strangely retro-sounding compared to his colleagues in the genre at the time, like Chemical Brothers and Prodigy, and especially next to artists like Autechre and Aphex Twin. But at least they could be construed as unintentionally funny, whereas the chill out ballads and instrumentals are meant to be taken dead serious. And those tracks are all on the second half of the album! I don’t know, in general, these exercises simply bore me, but one of them, “God Is Moving over the Face of the Waters”, pretty much just looped the same maudlin passage over and over, and was begging for a voice-over from Morgan Freeman or Peter Coyote. That one was extra special in the excruciating department. Then the next, and thankfully last song, “When it’s Cold I’d Like to Die”, featuring a vocalist who sounded a bit like Death warmed over, came on to complete this documentary-inspired torture-by-aural boredom. All in all, the positioning of these New Age-derived tracks really dropped the bottom out of this disc, for me at least. My guess is that they were intended as intense background music for the accompanying essays and facts Moby diligently listed in the liner notes. To tell you the truth, I actually enjoyed the essays, though. They were honest, forthright, well-written, and I can respect the viewpoints. But overall, I’m just wondering why he didn’t put some of this passion into his music! To wrap this up, Moby at this time in his career appeared to be a bundle of nerves and going in like sixteen different directions from a technical perspective. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to translate that into a coherent experience, at least not for this listener.

The airbrushed images on the cover match up with the vapid, empty statements within. About the only thing that keeps this hulk barely afloat is "Talk Dirty to Me" - which is at least fun from a nostalgic point of view - every other song is atrocious from so many angles. Possibly subsequent albums were better, but here what you get is a ton of recycled glam-metal clichés and half-hearted good times. Our old cat - bless her heart - dragged in half-dead animals with more personality than this album.

Nothing to do with electric cars or inventors, for once upon a time this Tesla was the butt of many a grunge fan's joke. Truth be told, Yours Truly was only familiar with a few of their songs around the turn of the 90's - most notably their cover of "Signs", which went the "Unplugged" route before MTV made it fashionable. Despite what the title states, the pranksters may have had a point, because their debut makes two major errors - it's too serious for a glam metal record, and too glam to be taken seriously. The second half of the album somewhat makes up for a drab first half, but overall, it's hard to think of who this would resonate with.

For some reason, out of all the New Riders albums it is this one which piques my interest, even though in many respects it could be considered as substandard as previous efforts. Certainly, they were on the decline here - they practically give over the title track to Sly Stone and his band, plus, there is an inordinate amount of guests and cover songs - more than normal, at least. But on the plus side of the ledger, the album has a crazy sort of energy going for it which none of the other NRPS albums ever had, which keeps me interested. It's as if they finally decided to break out of their eternal slumber, and finally let loose on a studio record. The title track with Sly Stone really sets the tone in this regard, just building off the same "oh, what a mighty time" lyric for what seems like an endless amount of time. Nothing else on the album even begins to match up, but at least some of the songs are funny when they are supposed to be funny ("Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother"), authentic ("La Bamba"), and so on.

The `Riders were a jittery distant cousin of the Grateful Dead, choosing to appropriate country music like them, but avoiding the lengthy jams and studious approach that the Dead was so known for. This was their biggest-selling album, because of the title track and a couple of other songs which have a bit more depth ("Lonesome L.A. Cowboy", "L.A. Lady") than usual NRPS material. But generally, it is the same gaggle of non-serious, laconic, unimpressive country-rock songs as what is on the albums before and after Panama Red.