Elanor Moss – The Knife, The Needle
London-based songwriter Elanor Moss releases her debut album, The Knife, The Needle, today on Merge Records, and unveils the video for focus track “Secrets of the Universe.”
The Knife, The Needle concerns itself with the way relationships between people are transformed, complicated, and troubled by love. It’s devastating work, a feat of tight lyrical construction that is at once patient and vulnerable, opulently rendered and keenly felt, as on “Secrets of the Universe.” Moss says “Secrets of the Universe” is “a song marking the beginning of a relationship and how it can shift and move things in you, quietly showing you things about yourself you didn’t know before. Helping you see yourself differently.”
Across the nine songs that make up The Knife, The Needle, Elanor Moss renders joy and pain in exquisite peals of psych-folk, her darkly-dreamed vignettes offering, if not catharsis, an understanding of the complexity of the journey towards it — healing as a process, rather than an object one obtains. Remarkably, The Knife, The Needle emerged from a place of restraint, with Moss — staying in a cabin near her parent’s house in the Scottish highlands after initially recording an entirely different version of the album in New York City (“a bit rollocking,” she notes) — feeling the pangs of the album she hadn’t recorded — “quieter, weirder, more English.”
Rerecording with a new ensemble and producer/engineer Pete Miles was a risk, but setting aside an already completed project was worth it. In the quieter, weirder, more English sound manifested here, Moss captures something fleeting, ephemeral, and honest about the moments in which love, for good or ill, irrevocably changes someone. Both the knife and the needle named in the album’s title are capable of drawing blood, but illuminated by her voice and guitar, what bleeds out from these songs is nothing short of poetry.
Elanor Moss Tour Dates:
Fri. Aug. 21 – London, UK @ Rough Trade Denmark St (In-store)
Sat. Aug. 22 – Oxford, UK @ Truck (In-store)
Tue. Aug. 25 – Canterbury, UK @ Vinylstore Jr (In-store)
Sat. Aug. 29 – Little Mongeham, UK @ Smugglers Festival
Sat. Sept. 5 – London, UK (w/ Bedouine)
Thu. Oct. 1 – Glasgow, UK @ The Poetry Club
Fri. Oct. 2 – Leeds, UK @ The Attic
Sat. Oct. 3 – Manchester, UK @ Low Four Studio
Sun. Oct. 4 – Stroud, UK @ The Prince Albert
Tue. Oct. 6 – Birmingham, UK @ Hare & Hounds
Wed. Oct. 7 – Bristol, UK @ The Jam Jar
Thu. Oct. 8 – Cardiff, UK @ Chapter Arts
Fri. Oct. 9 – Oxford, UK @ Common Ground
Sat. Oct. 10 – Ashburton, UK @ Field System
Sun. Oct. 11 – Brighton, UK @ The Folklore Rooms
Sun. Oct. 18 – Cambridge, MA @ The Lilypad
Mon. Oct. 19 – New York, NY @ Nightclub 101
Wed. Oct. 21 – Washington, DC @ Pie Shop
Fri. Oct. 23 – Harrisonburg, VA @ Sage Bird
Sat. Oct. 24 – Durham, NC @ The Pinhook
Sun. Oct. 25 – Richmond, VA @ Spacebomb Studio
Tue. Oct. 27 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr Small’s Funhouse
Thu. Oct. 29 – Detroit, MI @ Moondog Cafe
Sun. Nov. 1 – Chicago, IL @ Tack Room
Mon. Nov. 2 – Davenport, IA @ The Raccoon Motel
Wed. Nov. 4 – Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop Bar
Fri. Nov. 13 – Seattle, WA @ Ballard Homestead
Sat. Nov. 14 – Portland, OR @ Turn! Turn! Turn!
Mon. Nov. 16 – San Francisco, CA @ 4 Star Theater
Tue. Nov. 17 – Los Angeles, CA @ Moroccan Lounge
Thu. Dec. 3 – London, UK @ Cecil Sharp House
#elanor.moss