Moses Sumney - græ

May 15, 2020 - Jagjaguwar

With the culmination of his double-album græ, Moses Sumney has demonstrated a phenomenal scope of vision. He defies gravity at the top of a pyramid of musical culture and convention, activating what he needs to activate when he needs it. At the top, he is alone. But from that big-picture awareness, he has complete authority. He can see all four sides of the shape beneath him, and all of each of those sides. He knows music is the tool for him to use to speak, not the other way around. I wish all musicians understood this, but very few do. We in culture carry much baggage.

That baggage is exactly what Sumney’s entire album explores from above—how our penchant for identifying what we see and trying to create collective understanding has evolved beyond survival and into something to be questioned. The root of inequality, the structure that holds us place, the cause of existential pain and injustice. Something human used against humans for power and control.  

The concept of “being islanded” is a recurring theme on græ. Someone other than you forcing you into a state of isolation without your consent or control. Sumney wears nihilism as an armor to speak candidly about identity in a world that wants to define him with labels. A triumph of this album is that he has created powerful music that holds our attention even though it is nearly impossible to identify outside of the message it is expressing. græ doesn’t fit into a genre. For those able to glimpse a bigger picture, it shows just how limiting identity is when it comes to the multitudes contained in humans. The joke is on us for trying to define it for mass consumption before we actually listen. 

By elevating his voice first, Sumney demonstrates enormous emotional range. He has one of the most versatile singing voices I’ve ever heard. He flows smoothly in and out of modal zones, one minute sardonic, the next tender, mournful, empowered, angry, tumultuous. The effect is dramatic, but not theatrical. Listening from beginning to end, you feel so much of him in the music that it’s tough to say you don’t know him personally afterward. These are his depths. You are swimming inside of them. Every minute detail of your journey has been calculated. His voice lays down a fluid structure that guides the musical composition of the songs, keeping the poetry of his lyrics is front and center, unbridled, unyielding and paramount. The instrumental decisions underneath function like a chorus in a classical tragedy but with the playful spontaneity of a jazz quartet’s improvisational communication. He has an eclectic approach to songwriting, but it’s not eclectic for the sake of eclecticism like I see all too often today in the futility of post-internet youth. His art is honest, not optical. That’s a gift. ☔