Moses.Sumney's Time Machine

This summer, he's got music for '90s R&B lovers and the movie MaXXXine for '80s horror freaks.

- Molly Lambert

IN THE TERRACED garden of a mid-century house in the hills above the Sunset Strip, Moses Sumney is preparing for an intimate night of industry networking. It has been a swelteringly hot day, but the sun is starting to dip. A cool breeze is blowing in on the shaded gravel patio upstairs, where the musician and actor’s performance is being set up. Tall and striking in loose black pants, a black vest, and sunglasses and adorned with strings of gold necklaces, Sumney is running through a set list of songs from his upcoming EP, Sophcore, starting with the burbling “I’m Better (I’m Bad).” His band is relatively new (some of them met and rehearsed with Sumney for the first time just the day before), but you would never know it from listening as they warm up and lock in. Between lyrics, Sumney sings directions to the soundboard like “More guitar” and “Remember, we don’t have drums.” He asks saxophonist Alden Hellmuth to play some little arpeggios, and she comes in softly.

The mic stand holds three mics, one running through an Auto-Tune filter that makes Sumney sound tenderly distorted. It is adorned with a large bouquet of hydrangeas and wildflowers, as though his voice were coaxing the flowers to open. The audience, made up of music supervisors, eventually arrives for what’s known as a showcase. This is where Sumney will debut his new material in the hope that it might find placement in film and TV shows, adding to his list of more than 20 credits. He lightly roasts the crowd, asking if people finished cutting their trailers prior to the show and joking about clearing “needle drops.” He then introduces a song by suggesting what kind of movie it might soundtrack— one with a plot of childhood sweethearts reunited—and it slowly becomes clear that he’s describing Celine Song’s Past Lives.