Elliot Moss
Highspeeds
GRAND JURY
5/10
Elliot Moss is only twenty-one years old, but the songs on his debut album Highspeeds belie a sense of emotional maturity that’s generally lacking amongst most twenty-somethings. While his intentions are pure and his messages sound, the LP finds Moss unfortunately falling somewhere in between the spectrum of his obvious influences of Chet Faker and James Blake. He shares the same fondness for clever use of Auto-Tune and subtly layered vocal tracks, but the richness of his voice is the album’s main positive aspect—it cuts through the muddied digital haze of each song. Standout tracks like “Slip” and “I Can’t Swim” give off the feeling of emerging from the cerebral fog of jet lag, desensitized by hours hopping across time zones and slowly trying to shake off the numbness. But that unclear uncertainty runs through each of Highspeeds’ eleven tracks, resulting in boredom and a desire to escape Moss’s electronic murmurs and ambient vocals, instead of diving deeper.
