Moses Sumney - Fall Creek by Sound Expeditions

Moses Sumney • “Fall Creek”

Fall Creek, one of the six waterways in Indianapolis, has maintained a lot of its natural beauty over the years, even though it is surrounded by noise pollution from the street traffic. It also suffers from the direct insertion of the city’s sewage into its waters. Singer-songwriter Moses Sumney sought to capture the friction between the waterway’s inherent, natural qualities and the invasive human elements that have affected it over time. Fall Creek commences with a folk-like essence captured through the use of a single acoustic guitar and Sumney’s vocals. Halfway through the score, electronic elements enter to represent modernity and the lyrics bid warning that it will be “missed when it ceases to flow.” The wordless bridge section that follows acts as an aural time lapse to capture the duration of decades rolling by, and how human presence is increasingly disturbing the creek’s ecosystem. Fall Creek, like the actual creek itself, is a poetic amalgamation of elements that are acoustic, technological, and natural — sometimes seamless, sometimes chaotic.

GPS Location: 39.810928, -86.142980
Duration: 04:00
Year: 2015
Commissioned as one of six original music pieces of the Streamlines project, funded by the National Science Foundation.

Lyrics:
Malleable to the touch
Fall creek has fallen too much
Manmade chaos creepin’ in
Water keeps the thicket skin

Fall into the creek with all your woes
You will miss the creek when it ceases flow

Everybody lives downstream
Broken backdrop of the scene
Restoration still unseen
Water’s the most forgiving

Fall into the creek with all your woes
You will miss the creak when it ceases flow

So the creek retreats into itself
When the body speaks it pleads for help
Fall into the creek with all your woes
You will miss the creek when it ceases flow

Don’t fall into the creek with all your woes

Credits:
Performed and Written by Moses Sumney
Co-Produced by Moses Sumney and Joshua Willing Halpern
Guitar by Rene Galvez and Moses Sumney
Ukulele by Rene Galvez
Album art by Oliver Blank
Album image by Tad Fruits

Special thanks to CityWay.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DRL-1323117 and supported by subaward 001096-1213TCDRLD.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.