Sydney Festival
Moses Sumney
St Stephen's Uniting Church, January 14
★★★★
Moses Sumney begins his first Australian show performing a song written entirely in Hebrew. This in itself is not so surprising, until you consider that the Los Angeles and Ghanian-raised musician taught himself the language - and that he's singing it in a church.
It's this position of gleeful subversiveness in which Sumney seems the most comfortable. He sings like an angel but writes lyrics like a goth, with his most recent EP, Lamentations, proving that death really can sound sweet if you know how to write a good harmony.
Sumney represent a growing coterie of envelope-nudging solo artists experimenting with bringing technological trickery to organic performance. He creates worlds within the confines of a guitar, two microphones and a loop pedal. However, he is unfairly blessed with a bevy of secret weapons, not in the least his formidable voice.
A fluid, elastic thing that effortlessly spirals toward a falsetto that would make Jeff Buckley blush, Sumney's piercing vocal performance is also a master class in timbre.
In the space of one verse, he can sing the same note in three different ways. His level of control is astounding, and whether he's whispering, serenading or shouting, Sumney is intrinsically aware of how to manipulate his voice, both with and without digital aid.
Sumney also knows how to move, animating his notes with the dynamism of a gospel performer and often sinking to his knees during dramatic high points on songs like Rank and File and Lonely World.
He arranges his music with both the skill of a jazz conductor and the delicious darkness of a nihilist punk rocker. To hear him play is to witness a study in modes, where chord progressions take left turns into other worlds and melodies flutter between major and minor but somehow end up making sense.
It's a bit like Radiohead's Thom Yorke rewrote the Nina Simone songbook and gave it to Bjork to sing; challenging, otherworldly but remarkably beautiful.
He arranges his music with both the skill of a jazz conductor and the delicious darkness of a nihilist punk rocker.
Rumour has it that Sumney often asks to play quiet rooms without a bar, so as to ensure his audience pays attention. If tonight's show is any indication, it seems like in future, they're going to have a much harder time ignoring him.