Moses Sumney: Sophcore EP Album Evaluate

When Moses Sumney sings, “I’m not a lady, I’m not a person” in one thing near his talking voice on “Hey Woman,” I believed, Proper on. He’s himself and his creative forebears too—particularly, the Prince who provided an identical affirmation in “I Would Die 4 U” Then the kicker: “I’m an amoeba.” The San Bernardino native of Ghanaian dad and mom sings over squishy, squirrelly tracks whose post-Maxwell R&B foundations accommodate broken rock rifflets and modest gospel overtones; you may think him training vocal runs within the bed room earlier than church. The six-song EP Sophcore—a curriculum vitae outlining his strong laryngeal assets—recaps Sumney’s achievements and units up what audiences may anticipate from a brand new full-length assertion. It’s a tease in one of the best sense.

4 years in the past, on his breakthrough album, grae, Sumney expressed the yearnings of a soul sonic pressure who liked being, as he sang on one in every of its strongest tracks, “neither/nor.” That album’s “Virile,” a collaboration with industrial rock act Yvette, regarded masculinity as a land value invading with a conquering military. To grasp such whisper-to-a-scream dynamics requires a way of self that eschews bluster however is a lot assured.

A collaboration with Portland producer Graham Jonson, who goes by shortly, shortly, yields Sophcore’s prettiest and liveliest moments. “Gold Coast” begins as a sensual, puttering factor indebted to Bjork’s Vespertine. Sumney’s chalky falsetto enhances and works in opposition to the plucked guitars, distorted multi-tracked vocals, and synths; his impressionistic lyrics (“Discuss in tongues, testify/Dawn pores and skin, shade of clay”) say no thanks to coherence, bless them. A symphony of gurgles and music-box melodies cushions “I’m Higher (I’m Unhealthy),” wherein Sumney recreates with louche delight a dialogue between himself and a feminized object of want.

Over Sophcore’s recombinant grooves, Sumney radiates a way of enjoyable. Confidence in his vocal abilities doesn’t congeal into self-regard. Seems he’s proper: Trills and melisma swimsuit preparations that swell and contract like protoplasmic organisms. The finger-snapping rhythm monitor on the closing “Love’s Chorus” is nearly an afterthought, a metronome to remind Sumney that his fascinations stay earthbound regardless of the stratospheric vantage level of his vowel experiments. “I used to be in my world, you had been in yours too,” he coos, “so let’s chorus.” From what—independence or romance? Duetting with himself into infinity, he deepens the enigmas.