“Isolation comes from ‘insula’, which means island.” What a way to start an album during these times. This line is repeated multiple times during the intro track, "insula". It’s the perfect introduction to the album, with the narrator ending the track saying, “Here we go into the græ.” It’s worth noting that the first part of the album was released in February, before we all went into quarantine. Whether or not you’ve been living by yourself during these times, the feeling of isolation is a lot more relevant now to most people than it was just a couple months ago.
Moses Sumney is a musical enigma. His voice, and especially his falsetto, is something unlike any other voice I’ve ever heard. It can have the drastic and sudden changes in pitch and styles that Young Thug made popular in hip hop, like on the song "Cut Me". The song "Colour" shows how peaceful his voice can be as well, as it's extremely calming when it comes in after the minute long saxophone ensemble. It wraps you up in a warm blanket and just lays you down to sleep. It’s a special moment on this album, of which there are quite a few of.
There’s not going to be many more adventurous albums this year than græ. This project is over an hour long, and it makes good use of that time, throwing the listener from sound to sound as the album progresses. There are so many sounds in this album that he chose to release it as two different parts so fans could digest it all, with the first section coming out in February and the second part in the middle of May. While the second half is a lot more sonically cohesive than the first, the first contains moments of pure brilliance.
"Cut Me" sounds like an old school soul song, with a trombone cutting in after he finishes each vocal passage. The choppy piano keys provide the lone instrumentation during his verses, along with a singular bass melody. Instead of having a big climax at the end with all these instruments, there’s a mellow instrumental with some synths and drums that help guide the song to it’s satisfying close. "Virile" shows Moses taking more of an aggressive baroque pop style. There’s many traditional baroque pop instruments in this song; including a cello, strings, flute, harp, and bass played by the legendary Thundercat. But instead of it being airy and beautiful; the prominent drums, guitar, and dark strings bring an aggressiveness to this track that’s not normally in baroque pop.
The song talks about masculinity and how the masculine stereotypes should be broken down. This is especially evident in the chorus, “Desperate for passing grades, the virility fades. You’ve got the wrong guy. You want to fit in, amp up the masculine. You’ve got the wrong idea, son.” Virile is often used as a characteristic of masculinity. Moses is taking this idea and showing that you’re not just a man because you’re physically strong and aggressive. This song and video show that side of him, but that’s not all there is. On the interlude titled "boxes" after this aggressiveness section of the album comes to a close, a speaker says, “I truly believe that people who define you control you. And the most significant thing that any person can do, but especially black women and men, is to think about who gave them their definitions and rewrite those definition for themselves.” It’s not just about trying to rework the boxes of masculinity and femininity, it’s about taking away those boxes that confine people to their stereotypical gender norms and letting people wholeheartedly be themselves.
Moses doesn’t limit his album to just men breaking out of their boxes, he talks about the female perspective as well. The interlude "jill/jack" takes a heavy interpolation from a Jill Scott song from the year 2000. The first half of the track repeats the phrase, “He had that masculine thing down. Shoulders and back straight. Never slumping, never round.” But after two repetitions of this version, he switches it to say she instead of he, with everything else staying the same. She has those masculine traits as well, not just him. Even a later skit in the album starts off with, “I insist on my right to be multiple.” This idea is the backbone that everything on this album is based off of. Even though the album goes all over the place sonically, this idea that there should be no boxes of masculinity and femininity drive the entire album. It’s not black or white, but græ.
"Neither/Nor" finds Moses struggling with the idea of whether or not he will be able to find a relationship with someone who will accept him as he is, but also not wanting to die alone. It takes on a more indie rock vibe, with Moses playing guitar and bass on the track, showing that he’s an all around artist and not just a singer. The song "Polly" has a similar theme, describing a relationship between a monogamous and polyamorous person from the monogamists perspective. The heartfelt guitar ballad is one of the most simple on the entire project, but it really helps the lines hit harder and provides a beautiful closer to the first half of the project.
The second half is a lot more mellow and consistent than the first half. The songs are almost all slower ballads, with the focus more on his lyricism and voice. He utilizes his stunning falsetto a lot more on this half. The opener, "Two Dogs", focuses on the dogs Moses had as a kid. He tells a story about how the dogs got sick, and finding the dogs dead on his back porch from too much medicine. Songs like this is where the baroque and art pop label that is Moses traditionally gets tagged with comes from. There are no drums in the song; only a flute, harp, saxophone, and synthesizer. There are only a couple lines out of the entire four minute song where Moses isn’t singing in falsetto. But with how unique and emotive his falsetto is, it doesn’t provide a problem whatsoever.
The next couple songs are even more minimal. The only instrumentation on either of these songs is a synthesizer played by The Weeknd collaborator, Oneohtrix Point Never, who is all over this project. These songs focus more on Moses’s voice to make them not boring, and he succeeds in that. The vocal performance on "Keeps Me Alive" is one of the best on the entire album. These songs have some of the most thoughtful lines on the entire project, including the ending of "Bystanders" where he says, “Honesty is the most moral way, but morality is gray,” which is obviously another call back to the album title.
The last song, "Bless Me", ends the project on a high. The fullness of the first half of the album comes back again here, as he brings back a lot of those same instruments to create this orgasmic bridge of the song that gives the project the final send off that it deserves. Moses proves on this project that he’s an artist for the free, creative, and people willing to step outside their comfort zones. An artist worthy of our attention who will push the sonics of baroque pop and music in general to places not many are willing to go. An artist that will not color inside the lines. An artist that cannot be described in black and white terms, but with the græ.
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