There\u2019s a sense that we, as humans, must be completed by someone else \u2013 that everyone is made for someone else.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s this \u201cthe one\u201d mentality that leads to a feeling of emptiness \u2013 a feeling that there\u2019s something wrong with you if you don\u2019t strive to find \u201cthe one\u201d.<\/p>\n
Aromanticism <\/em>by Moses Sumney is an album about loneliness \u2013 not emptiness, but loneliness (more on this in a second). Aromanticism<\/em> explores whether \u201ctrue love\u201d has to exist for everyone, and what it means for you if it doesn\u2019t. Sumney seems to push back on the ideas that you cannot be complete by yourself and that loneliness must necessarily be bad.<\/p>\n Aromanticism<\/em> tells me what I didn\u2019t know about myself and shows me what I didn\u2019t want to see. Parts of the album remind me of Bon Iver\u2019s Bon Iver<\/em>, and at other times the production seems more Francis and the Lights, with touches of Frank Ocean slipped in here or there. But I\u2019d be wrong to say that Sumney is simply an amalgamation of these artists, because he\u2019s not. His production is bare-bones minimalism, with most tracks backed by some simple piano or guitar and drums, but it feels whole, which is not a feeling that many others can capture. Songs like \u201cDoomed\u201d create a soundscape that make me feel both complete and alone at the same time, and seem to suggest that those qualities aren\u2019t mutually exclusive. It\u2019s an album, thus, not about emptiness \u2013 for you always feel complete, covered in beautiful sound and layers of Sumney\u2019s vocals \u2013 but in fact about loneliness. It\u2019s a depressingly optimistic record, somehow saying that everything we fear about ourselves is valid, and yet okay, in like a \u201cit\u2019s okay to be a little isolated and apathetic\u201d kind of way.<\/p>\n \u201cPlastic,” a re-recording of one of Sumney\u2019s older songs, has a hook that\u2019ll stick in your head like peanut butter, but the entire song only really exists for the outro: \u201cMy wings are made [of plastic] \/ And so am I\u201d. He realizes how shallow all of his relationships have been, and on song \u201cDoomed\u201d, he asks us \u201cAm I idle, if my heart is idle? \/ Am I doomed?\u201d It\u2019s a question that never really gets answered, but the simple fact that he is going through it makes us feel complete. The album ends with a powerful four-line outro on \u201cSelf-Help Tape\u201d: \u201cImagine being free \/ Imagine tasting free \/ Imagine feeling free \/ Imagine feeling\u201d. As a closer for an album like this, it\u2019s the most hopeful and optimistic thing we get, paired with soft, ethereal instrumentals and Sumney\u2019s flowing harmonies.<\/p>\n Maybe it\u2019s just me, but I don\u2019t think it is. I think everyone has a fear that if they\u2019re not able to love, and love completely, then there\u2019s no purpose to their life. It\u2019s this lingering fear, something we repress, that Aromanticism<\/em> by Moses Sumney brings out of hiding and beats to a pulp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s a sense that we, as humans, must be completed by someone else \u2013 that everyone is made for someone else. It\u2019s this \u201cthe one\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":340,"featured_media":19702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1020,2722],"tags":[1138],"coauthors":[2805],"class_list":["post-19700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ae","category-reviews","tag-music"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/340"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19700"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19812,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19700\/revisions\/19812"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19700"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}