Moby, “Destroyed”

Nine studio albums in, it’s safe to call Moby reliable. The bald-headed vegan nerd who became synch licensing’s reluctant poster boy with 1999’s multiplatinum “Play” has a baseline sound and feel-simple melodies and themes, breathy electronic soundscapes, an underlying sense of solitude-that doesn’t vary too wildly from album to album, despite their different themes. Coming off 2009’s winsome and sad “Wait for Me,” “Destroyed” is a much more plugged-in, uncomfortable affair. Inspired by Moby’s insomniac international touring during the last few years, the whole album feels on the brink of some sort of-yes-destruction, the kind wrought upon one’s self in the lonely hotel rooms in which it was recorded. There’s a troubled instrumental named after Sylvia Plath’s pen name on “The Bell Jar” (“Victoria Lucas”), a meditation on the bitter end with throaty vocals by Inyang (“The Right Thing”) and an empathetic plea to a drug addict (first single “The Day”). With an accompanying book of similarly isolated photographs, “Destroyed” succeeds in making a solo artist’s tour fatigue palpable.