PHILADELPHIA — Shannen Moser makes sad, beautiful music.
The Philadelphia songwriter's new album "The Sun Still Seems to Move" is a quietly powerful collection that ponders love and loss, and the singer's place in the universe on artful songs that come to life with fingerpicked guitar, banjo and subtle orchestration.
Produced by Moser and Alex Melendez and recorded in West Philly, Kensington and upstate New York, it's Moser's third folk album for Philadelphia pop-punk label, Lame-O Records, following "Oh, My Heart" (2017) and "I'll Sing" (2018).
Label founder Eric Osman likens Moser's growth as an artist to a "caterpillar to a butterfly. This album feels like the fully formed evolution of a songwriter who was already doing captivating things."
The 11,000+ listeners who continue listening to Moser, their four-year hiatus notwithstanding, will agree. On a recent morning in a park near their South Philly home, Moser talked about growing up in rural Pennsylvania and how moving to Philadelphia transformed their life. The conversation has been edited.
Q. This album is getting lots of praise. How's that feel?
A. It feels like there's a few more people paying attention and that feels good. But mostly, I think it has to do with [the fact] that I've lived in Philly for almost 10 years now. So it just comes with having a deeper musical community.
Q. You grew up in Berks County. What town?
A. It's called Oley Valley. It's super rural. My high school graduating class was 70 kids. It's an old farming community, so it's very beautiful. It feels like a stuck-in-time type of place. There's a very small, cool music scene. A little old-timey, and some young punk stuff and Appalachian folk happening in Kutztown.
Q. When did you start making music?
A. I always sang, and my mom was a big Stevie Nicks, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Laurel Canyon person. When I was 15, I started playing the guitar. My older brother plays music, too. And when I moved to Philadelphia I realized that was something that I could do.
Q. What brought you here?
A. I went to college in Northern California and realized school wasn't really for me. So when I came home, I had friends living in Philadelphia and they had said how cool of a city this was. I moved here in 2013, and I just kind of stayed. You blink and you're almost 30.
When I first landed, I started playing shows just a little bit and then met all of these incredible people. It's wild how many talented and kind people live in such a confined space.
Q. When did you first start writing songs?
A. I grew up doing this thing called Sacred Harp singing. It's called shape note singing, which is really beautiful. It's rooted in the Quaker religion and in Berks County, it's really popular. It's all a cappella.
Maybe at 16 or 17 I started writing songs, and then when I moved to Philadelphia, it gave me the confidence to share it with people. Coming here changed the trajectory of my life completely.
I've toured and seen other musical communities around the country and maybe I'm a little biased but I think Philly is absolutely unmatched. Not just because of people, who are so good at what they do, but just how kind and inclusive they are. The magic of it is just that it exists.
Q. Were you raised Quaker?
A. No. I'm spiritual, and I don't get down with organized religion super hard. But it always made sense to me. You sit in a Quaker service and if you feel compelled to speak, you speak.
Q: You say something if you have something to say ...
A: And if you don't, you don't. In life I think that's a very good practice to adhere to. If I don't have anything to write about, I wouldn't share it. If it feels important, and I'm moved by it, that's the stuff I would release.
I started writing for this record in 2018. Right after "I'll Sing" came out. And then the pandemic happened. That was a really fraught time. ... So it took start-to-finish about four years to make.
Q: The first lines of “Ben” are startling: “All the boys I knew in middle school are dropping dead.” Who was Ben?
A: "Ben," I wrote in maybe 2016. Ben was a person I grew up with. We were neighbors in the Oley Valley and we would ride the bus together. Our ride was 45 minutes so we had a lot of time to hang out.
We would listen to music together, a headphone splitter-type thing. Ben was a Simple Plan/Good Charlotte kind of person and I was not. But we made it work.
Q. "You were singing Johnny Cash and I was 13, falling hard." Was Johnny Cash your music?
A. Yeah. Everyone had the new Green Day and I'm like, "No, I'm listening to Neil Young."
It was just a really influential friendship. It was very conservative where I was growing up. Me and my brother are both queer and he came into his queerness way early, and in that environment you don't talk about it. ... So that was really hard for him and later for me.
Ben was in an ATV accident and passed. It was the first friend death I ever experienced. ... So the song "Ben" is super informed by this one very special person in my life, but also the overarching theme of life being very fragile.
Q. "Foul Ball" is brilliant. What's that about?
A. I was living in West Philly. I had lived out there for three months with my partner and that relationship was ending during the pandemic. Yeah, that song is a straight up sad breakup song.
Q. "Oh My God" starts off: "I know that life's not one linear, seamless destination leaning towards a pillar moment saying you ended up just right." Is that what the album's about?
A. Without being extremely dramatic, I think it's this zoomed-out look at the human condition, the one-in, one-out cycle of joy and sorrow. ... It's a recounting of a lifetime of pain and looking back on it, and recognizing that life will go on. The sun still seems to move. It will rise, and it will set.
Q. So the outlook is brighter than it might appear?
A. It's pulling back the curtain on a lot of hope. It's recognizing the sadness of the world. But the core of the metaphor is hopeful.
Q. Tell me, if you want to, about the decision to come out as nonbinary and to use they/them pronouns. What made it the right time?
A. That was probably a year ago, and it's a funny thing to talk about, because everyone's experience is different, but a lot of my other friends who are gender-fluid or nonbinary or queer, there's always this like, lack of, like something feels ... away. But I can't with my words tell you how.
When I moved to Philly, I started meeting other people who felt the same way and making a community of queer friends. It really opened the gate up for me to feel myself. It gave me the language to describe how I was feeling. And you know, it's still confusing ... But [the decision] was just a long time coming. The first time I saw that in a press release with those pronouns and my name attached to it ....
Q. When it said "they"?
A. Yes. It was this really special moment. I was like, that feels really good. So I think that with the making of a record that I really love and I'm proud of, and telling these stories, and coming into this new understanding of my identity: It's just been a really special year.
