Album of the week: May 15 – Moses Sumney

May 15th 2020

Moses Sumney defies boundaries and classification on his fearlessly bold second record, Græ. Across the sprawling, ambitious double LP, Sumney indulges in every whim of his singular musical palette, veering between visceral, avant-garde indie rock, orchestral jazz-pop, spiritual, folk-inflected soul, haunting, minimal electronica and spoken word. Elegant and antagonistic, his second full-length is energised by a defiant, audacious spirit, containing both ornate, maximalist bombast and sparse, shapeless reveries, carried always by Sumney’s angelic falsetto. Exploring the binaries that society imposes on individuals, Græ deconstructs and rejects ideas of gender, genre and race from within. Telling stories of heartbreak and how his individuality collides with a misunderstanding outside world, his second LP lyricism maps his journey from isolation to acceptance of his identity. Moses Sumney contains multitudes. He insists on his right to be seen in all of his polymorphic brilliance. And on Græ, he finds a musical language that embodies that complexity and moves beyond archaic binaries.


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