Make Music Pasadena is always a success, you can’t go wrong with a free music festival, but the problem is to see all the bands you want to see when they play on different stages, half a mile apart… you have to do a lot of walking! This year, I limited myself to two stages (the main ones on Colorado boulevard) but there were five stages spread around the city of Pasadena, and about 24 other places hosting music… some crazy schedule for one single afternoon!
Of course, I made sure to arrive on time for Moses Sumney, whom I had seen a couple of times before. Each time, I was blown away by his one-man-band phenomenal set and I wanted to see him gain. His melodies are melancholic and moving, his voice is elastic and sounds like honey, and when he does not perform his songs with just his guitar, he loops his own vocals along with clapping, tapping, and builds, layer by layer, amazing songs with his voice at the top of this polyphonic collage. He gave a truly beautiful and soulful set, when the sun was roasting the crowd, managing to give me goose bumps while sweat was running along my back… how many people can do that? Actually Moses had noticed the sun, and commented on his songs being unfit for this type of weather ‘I am gonna continue playing these downbeat emotional tunes when the sun is shining’, he said jokingly, ‘sometimes you want to say fuck the sun!’ As always, Moses had a great contact with the crowd, he is a natural and he is funny at the top of being super-talented.
He was charming the crowd with his melodious soul-jazz songs like ‘Dwell in the dark’, ‘Plastic’ and you could almost hear the rain tapping on the window,…they sounded like soothing lullabies, and then he joked about his new video for his song ‘Man on the Moon’, saying he was barely using the internet, ‘so it has been a struggle’… he played a new song and it was magical, a complex composition with his only voice looped many times, making this polyphonic symphony of sounds and harmonies.
I saw him covering Thom Yorke at the Echoplex a few months ago and this time he covered Majical Cloudz’s ‘Childhood’s End’ with once again no other instrument than his voice, sounding so cool and at ease, astonishingly building from scratch a tempest of sounds, then doing ‘Everlasting Sigh’, again alone with two mics, onomatopoeic loops and a delay pedal… There is something so genuine, pure and emotional about what he does and even under the 2 pm bright hot sun, it totally worked,… Can someone please sign this guy? He is totally amazing and doesn’t even have an album out? He has a cassette-tape out to be exact, ‘Do you know what a cassette is?’ he asked, ‘it’s a young crowd!’
Moses has already been noticed by Solange,… he is going to make it, this is certain.
More pictures of his performance here
