By It’s our Bandcamp Pick of the Week, featuring the tender and vulnerable songwriting of Elanor Moss’s THE KNIFE, THE NEEDLE!
Elanor Moss – THE KNIFE, THE NEEDLE
Genre: Singer-Songwriter, Folk
Favorite Tracks: “Fixer,” “Again, My Love,” “The Way That It Feels”
You’re making a deal with Elanor Moss when you press play on THE KNIFE, THE NEEDLE. By trying to understand her, you might just understand yourself, and thus a bone-deep bond can be formed: “And if you show me where it hurts / I can show you where it hurts.”
Deeply entrenched in the unending quest to be understood—by our friends, our lovers, strangers, even higher powers—Moss’ songwriting grapples with the delicate emotions and fragile connections needed to make fleeting peace with the world around us. Under quiet production, often centered on the still strums of a guitar and radiating with the warm flourishes of strings and horns at the edges of the music, Moss’ hushed, longing vocals try to find meaning in these connections. On one of the early standouts on the album, “Again, My Love,” Moss exudes a degree of settled wisdom regarding that search, singing:
“Things take flight
They up and catch the wind alone sometimes
While your back is turned away sometimes
They find their own way out your life
And in the space
The absence that it left behind
Something grows in you you couldn’t find
Before the loss”
THE KNIFE, THE NEEDLE’s emotional and proselike depiction of what is unknown is naturally something of a cosmic spiral—Moss’ tranquil songwriting and classical guitar playing center us, but throughout the album our understanding of both her and ourselves is left in the merciful limbo of being human. At the close of the album, she begins: “The way that it feels / To know you / Oh and the way it reveals I don’t know you.” It’s sage empathy that we could all use a bit more of. You can listen to the album over on Bandcamp.
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