The Knife, the Needle, by Elanor Moss
Listening to The Knife, the Needle is like watching the growth of a new branch on a very old tree, such as the Ankerwycke Yew, estimated to be 2,500 years old, in the English village of Wraysbury. The musical yew is English folk music.
Born in Leeds and based in London, Elanor Moss is cultivator as well as branch: after a pair of EPs, 2022’s Citrus and 2023’s Cosmic, she carefully nurtured the songs on this debut LP.
Her nurturing seems also to guide the nurturing of producer Peter Miles, whose other credits include many British rock acts, and arranger Matthew Herd, whose saxophone is one of the prettiest leaves added to Moss’s branch.
On the mood-establishing opening track, “Fixer,” Herd’s sax, Marcus Hamblett’s flugelhorn, Reid Jenkins’s fiddle, Jools Owen’s tenor horn, and Andrew Stuart-Buttle’s violin gently wave around Moss, whose carefully picked acoustic guitar and measured vocals consider how she and her beloved might wound or heal each other.
Her singing is the heartwood and sapwood of the branch, reminiscent of troubled UK folk legend Sandy Denny (dead at 31) and Denny’s contemporary Linda Thompson (mostly silenced now because of spasmodic dysphonia).
Moss shares their ability to draw sustenance from musical roots that go back centuries, even when “Clothes in a Hotel Sink” jars continuity with lyrics about self-pleasuring, selfies and self-help books.
Other jarring moments surface in “Sarah Waiting in the Car,” a stately ballad in which Moss sings, with disconcerting beauty and purity of repetition, “You’re so violent, baby,” and then, “I’m so violent, baby.”
Down to a whisper in “Secrets in the Universe” and up to a warble, accompanied by literal birdsong, in “The Way That It Feels,” Elanor Moss strengthens The Knife, the Needle into a branch that will break long before it falls, strong against any weather.
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