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It has been a swelteringly hot day, but the sun is starting to dip.
Between lyrics, Sumney sings directions to the soundboard like More guitar and Remember, we dont 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.
The audience, made up of music supervisors, eventually arrives for whats known as a showcase.
I remember how your nectar sweet / Now you got your specter hanging over me, he sings.
Ima take it back to 1993 / When I get my fingers on a time machine.
Its an ode to an old love that feels like a nicely worn-in jacket.
The sun sets across the street over a Netflix billboard that reads FAVORITE 3 WORDS: STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN.
Sumney, 32, has been putting out music known for its delicate beauty for a decade.
You cant just tell made-up stories from your head.
you gotta experience disappointment and heartbreak and joy and fun and boredom around other people.
(Hes still adapting to being back on a phone all the time.
)Sophcoreis rooted in the pursuit of deep connection to friends, lovers, and music.
This show is the launch of what Sumney jokingly calls his new sonic identity.
I think one of the hallmarks of my career has been radical vulnerability.
And I have no issue with being soft, actually.
I love to cry.
I love to make sad songs.
And that has always felt like its own form of protest, he says.
Despite more options than ever to pursue connections, real connection is still elusive and invaluable.
He replies, I dont know, Molly, what do you think it means?
Well, kind of a woman.
My relationship with it feels just, like, not of this earth, and it couldnt be explained.
Its me, and its amoebic.
This is what Asheville taught him.
When youre in the forest, youre not anything, he says.
The rocks dont have to tell you who or what they are.
This song is for sex, he tells the crowd in the yard before performing Hey Girl.
Being from Ghana, Ive always wanted to do that.
Sumney grew up with pastor parents in both SoCals Inland Empire and Accra.
Or even African music.
It was never like, Oh, listen to King Sunny Ade or Miriam Makeba.
There was actually just nothing.
By 7, hed written his first song.
He was 16 when he discovered Ella Fitzgerald on YouTube.
It changed my life, he says.
And then I moved to Stevie Wonder, he remembers, and then to Jeff Buckley and Radiohead.
Listening to voices like these, Sumney felt called to start making music himself.
These are my people.
These are my cousins.
Were related in my weird brain, he says he thought.
Sumneys musical influences became wide-ranging when he was studying poetry and creative writing at UCLA.
The Cocteau Twins are one bedrock, as is Joni Mitchell.
He is an ardent admirer of Bjork.
While preparing to write the new album, he listened to Jill Scott and Van Hunt.
After his R&B album, he says the next one will be inspired by folk.
Since his second album, 2020sGr,Sumneys attention has also turned to Hollywood.
A few years ago, he started listening.
On the show, Sumney got to sing and seduce Leia, played by Rachel Sennott.
He was shootingThe Idolwhen he got an audition forMaXXXine.
West and Sumney instantly hit it off.
Hes a really one of one kind of person, he says.
Sumney remembers thinking, Huh, this is interesting … a scary movie.
Having grown up in a religious household, he wasnt deeply acquainted with horror movies as a genre.
To prepare, he watched a list of films that West sent, including Brian De PalmasBody Double.
Sumney transforms effortlessly into an 80s video-store guy inMaXXXine.
Moving into acting has opened up new possibilities for Sumney.
Hed like to work with writer-director Cord Jefferson, who madeAmerican Fictionand is a fan of Sumneys.
He personally loves movies about regular people and the friction between emotions and circumstances.
But hes open to exploring just about anything.
I also would love to be an action figure whos secretly just really sad and emotional, he says.
A toy-soldier kind of person.
I am eager to act more but not so eager that Ill do anything, he says.
Luckily, I have a whole other career to tend to.
Hes a fan of the Sandy Denny original with Fairport Convention and loves Nina Simones cover.
The song is about the fleeting beauty of the natural world, yet its very hopeful.
So come the storms of winter, he sings like a tear that is threatening to fall.
And then the birds in spring again, I have no fear of time.
He soars into his falsetto for the chorus.
As the backyard string lights start to glow, Sumneys voice glides further up into the darkening sky.
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