Moses Sumney is an American singer-songwriter based in Asheville, North Carolina. His self-recorded EP, Mid-City Island, was released in 2014. He released another five-song EP in 2016, titled Lamentations. His first full-length album, Aromanticism, was released in September 2017. His second studio album, Græ, was released in 2020. Sumney has performed as an opening act for Dirty Projectors, Junip, and Sufjan Stevens.
Early life
Sumney was born in San Bernardino, California to Ghanaian parents. He moved with his family back to Ghana at the age of 10. Sumney described his childhood as "Americanized" by this age and had difficulty adjusting to the culture of Ghana. His family returned to Southern California when Sumney was 16, settling in Riverside, California He did not learn to play any instruments until he was older, writing a cappella music for years instead. Sumney did not perform his musical compositions publicly until he was 20. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles. He majored in creative writing and studied poetry, which helped him improve his songwriting.
Musical career
Sumney's debut, Mid-City Island, is a five-song EP that was self-recorded onto a four-track recorder given to him by TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek. The EP was described by Pitchfork as "primarily composed of first-takes and improvisation; the music is stirring but purposefully incomplete". Sumney joined Terrible Records after the release. He considers his songs to be performance based, and that many of his recorded compositions derive from fleshing the songs out through live performance. He has performed at venues such as the Hollywood Bowl and alongside artists such as Dirty Projectors, Junip, St. Vincent, and Local Natives. Sumney sang on the opening track of Beck's album Song Reader. On September 30, 2016, Sumney released Lamentations, an EP which featured a guest appearance from Thundercat. Sumney's first full-length album, Aromanticism, was released on September 22, 2017 by Jagjaguwar. It received acclaim from Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and The New York Times, which also named it one of the best albums of 2017. Several songs from the album have been featured in the soundtracks of various television shows. His 2017 single "Doomed" appeared in the Season 6 finale of Netflix's Orange is the New Black, and appeared again in Westworld, Season 3, Episode 3, "The Absence of Field". His 2017 single "Quarrel" appeared in Netflix’s Dear White People. His 2017 song "Plastic" and his 2020 song "Keeps Me Alive" both appeared in HBO's Insecure. Sumney played himself in Season 1episode 4 of HBO's Random Acts of Flyness. Sumney released his second studio album, Græ, in two parts in 2020. The first part was released on February 21, 2020, and the second part was released on May 15, 2020, accompanied by a physical release of the double album. In March of 2020, he released the self-directed music video "Cut Me".
