Moses Sumney’s 2017 album Aromanticism is what he calls an exploration of “lovelessness as a sonic dreamscape”, where he examines the various facets of the socio-cultural heroing of romantic and sexual love, which are informed, in turn, by other forms of love taught to one in their childhood. In an introductory post to the album, he notes that the album’s essence is—”wondering if our urgent fear of dying alone is cellularly inherent or socially inherited. It’s wondering – if God is love, but you don’t feel love, are you a godless being?” He explains the essence of the album further in this post, saying”
“Alternative titles for Aromanticism could be: Narcissus; Don’t Touch Me; Please Touch Me; Sure, Let’s Touch Each Other but Please Leave Right After We Cum; Grey A; It’s Not You, It’s Me; It’s Not You – Actually, It’s Not Anyone; It’s Not Me, It’s My Childhood.”
Aromanticism has the listener interacting with a speaking voice that is intensely self-aware and performs a sort of post-Icarian motion—it soars, falls, crawls, and then picks itself up. As he moves and draws attention to the same, his story focuses on three ideas. First is the recurring notion of loneliness, which, to him, is a well-deliberated choice with pitfalls and dangers of which he is well aware. When he finds himself at the ugly end of this choice, he is not surprised, though still pained.
We might surmise that this character is influenced by Moses Sumney himself, given that he often echoes this sentiment in other albums and interviews. For instance, in a 2021 interview with i-D, he points out his requisites for a home: ‘..after I got [to London], I realised I wasn’t focused enough, I wasn’t alone enough. I wanted to try living somewhere where I was in constant communion with the birds and the trees.’
Second, in keeping with the first or as causal to it, is the negotiation of the “self” as divorced from the other, driven by the sole objective of resisting being gazed at. “Love” is inferred as inherently comprising a power dynamic (as shown in the song “Stoicism”, where to his “I love you,” his mother responds “Thank You,” as though a profession of love begets gratitude) and must be rejected to preserve the image of the self. This negotiation is done using, in ascending order, the romantic/sexual Other, the parent ([m]Other), and the most significant Other (in terms of Moses Sumney’s upbringing as the son of a pastor), God.
Third is the negotiation of the self as both body and spirit, largely in an attempt to reconcile his hyper-emotionality and hyper-sexuality with his religion. He strives to maintain an equilibrium between the two. He fails and thereafter chooses to prioritise his body over his spirit, constantly drawing attention to his shape, form, wings, and indeed, his very physicality. Feeling victimised, he curls into foetal form, such that his spirit, at the end of the album, looms large over his puny body.
Aromanticism opens with an implicit reference to a previously released song of his (“Man on the Moon – Reprise” (2017) and “Man on the Moon” (2014) respectively) that ponders over this same tussle between solitude and isolation – “I used to say I loved to stay alone / Now the lights are never bright when I get home” – introducing the album to his listeners and making sure at the same time that they are familiarised with his earlier work. Moses Sumney begins narrating his story with “Don’t Bother Calling”, where, at the outset, he creates a distinction between his body and his spirit—”I’m not a body, the body is but a shell/ I disembody but suffering is sovereign”—and establishes his desire to remain autonomous in his romantic attempts—”Don’t bother calling, I’ll call you/…And I’ll call you when I feel finally free”. His characteristic falsetto is confident and seems aided by his religion, which finds expression in the chamberesque chorus.
In “Plastic”, he lets the lover and listener know that despite the self-adulatory bragging in the previous song (“I am the son of the sea”, etc.), he is, indeed, vulnerable. Still, he is also in control of the self-assured act he is putting up – “My wings are made of plastic / My wings are made up / And so am I”. The build to the chorus rises in pitch until it plateaus at the chorus, following which there is a descent, giving the impression of a failed attempt to soar in keeping with the lyrics. “Plastic” ends in an Old-Hollywood flourish.
With “Quarrel”, he continues to define his position within a dynamic with a lover (or, perhaps, God), having already established his position in the previous songs. Self-aware, he tells the other person not to call an altercation between them a “lover’s quarrel” since “Quoting this a quarrel so immorally implies / We’re equal opponents / And we both antagonize.” This is the most obviously church-inspired song in the album—opening with the harp and continuing in the vein of chamber music till 12:02. Beyond this point is an upward-rising techno-jazz raff, which seems to symbolise his divorce from God. This allows him to start levitating, this time properly, until he reaches the state symbolised in the album cover: floating in pure body form before he becomes earthbound again.
In “Stoicism”, one can hear him return to earth and walk on gravel before he starts talking. Here, he contextualises this immediate discomfort with intimacy in an interaction with his mother during childhood. As mentioned, this is where he tells her he loves her (the only time in Aromanticism that he uses the word “love”). He dissociates after her reply, making general comments about the world and the parallel states of opposition and co-dependence between loneliness and the world in “Lonely World”, “After all the laughter, emptiness prevails/ Born into this world with no consent or choice”. Perhaps ironically, “Lonely World” more upbeat than the previous songs, although it is also a stoic resignation to the world as it is. Yet it points towards a comfortable joy in self-awareness now that he understands the state of things even though he hasn’t yet made peace with it.
“Make Out in My Car”, co-written with Sufjan Stevens, is a forced fit into the narrative flow of Aromanticism and, even in terms of sound, fits more with fStevens’ body of work than Sumney’s. Even so, it goes back to the divorce between body and spirit established in “Don’t Bother Calling”, and advocates minimum commitment: “I’m not tryna go to bed with you/ I just wanna make out in my car”. This is contextualized further in “The Cocoon Eyed Baby” with another generalised statement about the state of the world. This time, though, he has made his peace with it.
In “Doomed”, however, he makes note of all he has said and done for the length of the album and, as in “Man on the Moon’”, finds himself lonelier than he thought he would be. His self-assuredness fades and he wonders in terms of his spirit, “When I expel/ From this mortal shell/ Will I die for living numb?” This is, perhaps, the most religious of all his songs. Listeners wonder if the “[h]ollowed one with inverted tongue” is himself or God. The arrangement in “Doomed” is almost bare but for a single cello in the background. He sums up his ruminations in the next song, “Indulge Me”, where, intensely self-aware, he asks his listeners to indulge him while he succumbs to his sorrows.
Again, in the final song, “Self-Help Tape”, as he does in 2020’s Grae, Moses Sumney reopens the conversation, pointing towards the cyclical nature of such self-reflective, introspective thought through a dynamic, angelic chorus voice. It almost feels as though he is gloating about the texture and nature of Aromanticism when he says, “Imagine being afraid / Imagine tasting the essence / Imagine tasting the grain.”
Works Cited
i-D. “i-D Meets Moses Sumney in his hometown of Asheville, North Carolina”. YouTube, 17 May 2021.
Sumney, Moses. “On Aromanticism“. Tumblr. 17 September 2017.