Video: Moses Sumney, ‘Lonely World’

Kevin Bronson on September 22nd, 2017

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In an artist statement on his album “Aromanticism,” Moses Sumney describes his invented word “aromantic” as “someone who doesn’t experience romantic love, or does to a diminished, abnormal degree.” And he calls his debut, out today via Jagjaguwar, “a concept album about lovelessness as a sonic dreamscape. It seeks to interrogate the idea that romance is normative and necessary.”

That the angel-voiced troubadour from UCLA could embrace such a self-abnegating concept is a bummer notion, but one he makes a case for throughout a rich, engrossing record. “Am I vital, if my heart is idle?” and “If lovelessness is godlessness, will you cast me to the wayside?” Sumney sings in “Doomed.” More than an anguished, beautiful album about lost love or longing, “Aromanticism” is a anguished, beautiful record about not needing it in the first place, and being OK with that vacancy, at least intellectually. In his early song “Plastic,” recast on the album, Sumney sings, “My wings are made of plastic, and so am I,” putting the theme out there: He is the Tin Man with a falsetto to die for. And he doesn’t need a plus-one.

Which brings us to the gripping new video for “Lonely World.” It’s directed by Allie Avital and “is a myth about alienation, featuring Moses Sumney as the sole human on a solitary planet, and Sasha Lane as a coy creature he discovers that seduces him into the void,” the artist and director say. “It’s a story about our inevitable desire for love and closeness and conversely, our instincts to destroy those that offer us those comforts.”

||| Watch: The video for “Lonely World”