GRAE

Moses Sumney evades definition as an act of duty: technicolor videos and monochrome clothes; Art Rock and Black Classical; blowing into Fashion Week from a small town in North Carolina; seemingly infinite collaborators but only one staggering voice. A young life spent betwixt Southern California and Accra Ghana not so much rootless as an epyphite an air plant. The scale is cinematic but the moves are precise deeds of art and stewardship. Sumney s new generous album græ is an assertion that the undefinable still exists and dwelling in it is an act of resistance. To try to pin Sumney down on a sound and really on any matter is to end up with a hand full of fog but his genius is never allowing the set to sound like a hodgepodge. His forthcoming double album expands upon the sonic universe built in Sumney s critically-acclaimed debut LP Aromanticism and subsequent EP Black In Deep Red 2014. The songs on græ may be divergent like the visceral Smashing Pumpkins drama of Virile and the intoxicated outro jazz of Gagarin. There s the kinky ambiguous bop of Cut Me countered with the sweeping amphitheater-ready Bless Me. But there s that voice always unknowable and penetrating threading these pieces together: a heavenly rasp a whale call Miles horn a soulful snarl. It all works to create a paradox keeping art and artist somewhere between any one sure thing - but surely something that demands your attention affixed and your breath bated. All of this is græ. There s probably a biblical analogy to be made about a person who just happens to be named Moses who flees the binary splits a massive body into two pieces and leads us through the in-between - holy and wholly rebellious. By breaking up græ into two multifaceted dynamic pieces Sumney is quite literally creating a grey in-between space for listeners to absorb and consider the art. Not strictly singles not strictly albums never altogether songs or spoken word segments on their own. It s neither here nor there. Neither/Nor if you will.