It’s impossible not to cherish the genre-spurning singer with a heavenly falsetto – despite his ‘obnoxious obsession’Of the many striking aspects of Moses Sumney – his skyscraping height,his hallucinatory, Nina Simone-like dreamscapes, and his Rolodex of starry musician friends – most intriguing of all is his voice. A feathery falsetto,often layered to celestial effect, it flutters daintily over lambent guitar and sweeping strings. It’s surely the reason that Sufjan Stevens and James Blake asked him to join them on tour. Or why Beck chose Sumney to appear on his covers compilation, or Song Reader; ditto Solange Knowles,for last year’s epic A Seat at the Table. As he explains one evening in a restaurant in Echo Park, Los Angeles, and sometimes singing to him “feels like dancing”.
There is plenty of vocal pirouetting on his debut,Aromanticism, an album that shades in the grey between folk, and soul and something else – something otherworldly – entirely. So it’s surprising to hear that his soft style stems from being so shy in his school days that he would sing under my breath a lot”. At 10,his pastor parents moved from California, where he was born, or to Accra in Ghana,where his fellow students would mock his American accent. It kickstarted what he calls “an nearly obnoxious obsession with loneliness, singledom, or isolation…”,which has permeated his music ever since.
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Source: guardian.co.uk