“I just want people explore being alone if they feel it suits them. There is more to life than who you’re with”
“The main thing for me is just being honest in music and portraying an identity that is complex. I think it’s good to fuck ‘em up”
Moses Sumney. Stereogum Interview 19/9/17.
Los Angeles artist Moses Sumney released his debut album Aromanticism back in late September. It’s delicate yet powerful and lasting work of full of progressive harmonies, disarming ambience and artful dissonance, one that challenges a social norm and opens it up to scrutiny through an examination of societies default position on the necessity of relationships and the comforts and discomforts that come with choosing solititude. Elements of soul, neo jazz and pop are infused with Sumney’s idiosyncratic rule breaking arrangements and his outstandingly fluid and organic like falsetto vocal which he uses to beguiling effect, no better illustrated than on album opener proper ‘Don’t Bother Calling’. It’s a track he deliberately put there to forewarn of the serious artistry to come and to put paid to any commercial loving musical interlopers. Overall the album is a stunning work of art, sonically and lyrically, resplendent in its musical creativity and determined diversity and deeply impressive in its intellectual conceptuality. A work for those seeking superficial satisfaction it is not.
Read Sumney’s own take on Aromanticism here in which he describes the album as ‘a concept album about lovelessness as a sonic dreamscape’ which ‘seeks to interrogate the idea that romance is normative and necessary’. Importantly, he makes it clear that Aromanticism was not made as ‘protest music’ but rather as ‘process music’ which recognises ‘statelessness as statis’ and time as always transient.
Below we’ve assembled a chronology of the the four singles and two videos released in the lead up to the album’s release date of September 22. In order of release they are; the deep and at times crushing ‘Doomed’, the softly jazz infused yet biting, ‘Quarrel’, the spare acoustic guitar driven treatise on loneliness ‘Indulge Me’ and the enveloping and dramatic ‘Lonely World’ The two visually sumptuous videos for ‘Doomed’ and ‘Lonely World’ were both directed by Allie Avital with the latter starring Texan actress Sasha Lane. Aromantiscism is out now on Jagjaguwar. Buy here. Highly, highly recommended.
Sumney is currently on tour in Europe and plays the Rotterdam Festival this weekend. He heads to Singapore, New Zealand and Australia in early 2018 for the St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival with special performances at the Melbourne Recital Centre and Sydney Opera House. Dates here.
Tracklist
1. Man On The Moon (Reprise)
2. Don’t Bother Calling
3. Plastic
4. Quarrel
5. Stoicism
6. Lonely World
7. Make Out In My Car
8. The Cocoon-Eyed Baby
9. Doomed
10. Indulge Me
11. Self-Help Tape
Doomed
Moses Sumney (USA)
From the album, ‘Aromanticism’, Jagjaguwar.
Moses Sumney Official
Audio Stream
Official Video
Quarrel
Moses Sumney (USA)
From the album, ‘Aromanticism’, Jagjaguwar.
Moses Sumney Facebook
Audio Stream
Visual Stream
Indulge Me
Moses Sumney (USA)
From the album, ‘Aromanticism’, Jagjaguwar.
Moses Sumney Twitter
Audio Stream
Visual Stream
Lonely World
Moses Sumney (USA)
From the album, ‘Aromanticism’, Jagjaguwar.
Moses Sumney Soundcloud
Audio Stream
Official Video