Words by Sara Cederberg
Elanor Moss spent three years away from songwriting before she made her debut album. During that time, the London-based songwriter borrowed a four-track tape machine, went back to therapy, and fell deep into Raymond Carver’s short fiction — all of which fed into The Knife, The Needle. Across nine songs of psych-folk built around her classical guitar and a chamber ensemble arranged by Matthew Herd, Moss writes about how love reshapes people, sometimes tenderly and sometimes not, with a directness she hadn’t allowed herself before.
Off Shelf: You spent three years recalibrating your relationship with songwriting before making this album — what did that period feel like while you were in it?
Elanor Moss: It was a really mixed time. I think sometimes it felt like I would never release music again, and I’d be happy if I was able to just write one song I felt good about. At the same time, I also felt like I was rediscovering my love of art outside of being someone who makes it. I was reading things I’d read as a student and connecting with and appreciating them in new ways, and trying to write just to write, and play just to play. Returning in a sense to the kind of playful innocence I had as a child in making art.
I used to love to write as a kid just for the fun of coming up with things on the spot and using my imagination, and I loved to draw because it was fun. There was no pressure around it then. It was a bit like being stranded on an island somewhere, panicking, then realising everything there was really preoccupying and beautiful and very scary, too, until eventually I didn’t mind that I was a bit lost.
OS: This is your debut full-length after the Citrus and Cosmic EPs. Did writing and recording a full album change how you think about sequencing and how songs talk to each other?
EM: Almost definitely. It’s funny — before I wrote the album I was very much like “I’ve never done anything of this scale like this before, I have no idea how I’m going to do it.” I almost felt like I had to know what I was doing in order to do it.
But the opposite ended up being true — I think I had to surrender to the process of muddling through each song a word at a time, and then the relationship between them became clear after. Each song was kind of chewing over some idea or another, and those ideas were connected in the end because they were part of a larger conversation I was having with myself at the time about different things.
In retrospect I can see I actually had done something like this before, when I wrote my undergraduate dissertation at University for my Literature course. I had a similar feeling then — I was like “this project is huge, I don’t know how I’m going to do it.” I had a subject, which was an Anglo-Saxon poem, and I went from there, not knowing what the thesis would be, and read around it and wrote about it until a thesis arrived, and I had formed an argument. Without that process of reading and writing into the unknown the argument would never have come. For an argument to be communicated well in a dissertation the different parts have to talk to one another, and be in relationship in a way that makes the message clear.
The album came about in a similar way — I didn’t know what I’d write about, what the main themes and ideas were, until it was written, which came after a long period of listening, reading, living, watching, and playing guitar. Once they were written I could organize them in a way, to take the listener on a bit of a journey.
So yeah, I think making the album taught me not to worry too much about the end point at the beginning, and to trust that the process will deliver if you stick to it. You will find a way in which the songs naturally speak to one another once they’re written. Not to put the cart before the horse, I guess.
OS: You recorded an entire version of this album in New York before scrapping it and starting over in the Scottish Highlands with Pete Miles. What did the New York version sound like?
EM: I worked with some of my heroes on the New York versions, and it was hard to let them go once I’d made these new ones! The sound was more diverse than the UK versions, and drawing from a different sonic pool. It is more Americana-leaning, with drums and bass guitar, and a very bluegrass-y fiddle. Some songs were loud and driving, like Sarah Waiting in the Car, which was full-band and a bit more of a loud wail of a song than the plaintive British version. And there were others that were very stripped back, like Secrets of the Universe which was just voice and guitar. So, yeah, definitely a very different record overall. Maybe one day I’ll share some of those versions too.
OS: The imagery in “Fixer” — the knife that might actually be a needle to stitch the wound — is such a stunning shift. Did that come to you all at once or did you have to write your way into it?
EM: Thank you! I had the idea of the “knife” as an image for giving someone power over you in love for a long time, and actually wrote a song called The Knife that didn’t make it onto the record. I wasn’t happy with that version of it because I didn’t feel I’d taken the idea far enough.
With the image still feeling like it needed exercising I ended up writing it into Fixer, probably 6 months later, which came out all in one sitting. I’d written the song Secrets of the Universe which has a similar conceit, of the wall turning into a door, so I guess that move was fresh in my mind still and worked its way through my subconscious into that last verse.
OS: You grew up in a devoutly Catholic family, were homeschooled, and eventually left the faith. Do you think that journey still shapes how you write about love and intimacy?
EM: It’s certainly something I think about when I think about my own relationship with love and intimacy in my life, and something I have a lot of curiosity about. From the place of symbol and image, I think it’s probably inevitable that certain religious framings still inform some sensibility in me — like hymns and devotional music as an expression of love and mystery. I also think about it in the broader context of how our beginnings shape us and imprint centuries-old patterns in us that we carry and wrestle with during our lives. That’s the same for everyone, regardless of it being a religious background, so I think that’s a theme people can relate to.
OS: Matthew Herd’s ensemble arrangements and the musicians on this record are such a big part of what you hear. How did that group come together, and what was the collaborative process like?
EM: This particular ensemble came about by accident. A few years ago, I had a show in London that I couldn’t play with the full band that I would usually have played with, but I still wanted to be able to play with an ensemble. The band that I usually play with; Matthew Herd, Marcus Hamblett, Jool Owen, and Andrew Stuart-Buttle – are all very talented multi-instrumentalists, and all play chamber instruments. So I had the idea to see if we could get some chamber arrangements together that suited everyone’s second instrument.
Matthew Herd (who plays saxophone) is a very gifted arranger, so when the idea came I called him to see if he might be up for arranging some music to accompany guitar and voice that suits all our players. I gave him some references — I think Judee Sill, Vashti Bunyan, Nick Drake – and he went off and wrote these beautiful arrangements. That was for about 5 of the album songs. The rest were improvised between the players in the studio during recording. We had Matthew Herd (saxophone), Marcus Hamblett (horn), Jool Owen (horn), Andrew Stuart-Buttle (fiddle), and Reid Jenkins (fiddle). Reid didn’t have any written parts, he just improvised the whole time – which is his forte! They’re all brilliant.
OS: The videos with Matthew Thorne were shot on 16mm in the Greek Peloponnese, which is a striking choice for an album you’ve described as “quieter, weirder, more English.” What drew you to Greece?
EM: I approached Matthew about collaborating with him on a video for Sarah Waiting in the Car after discovering his filmmaking via a music video for the band The Howl and the Hum. It just floored me — it was so beautiful and thoughtful, and I just had this feeling he would make something amazing if I could convince him to come on board. I sent him the record and we spoke on the phone. It turned out he is Australian and splits his time between Athens and Australia.
When I called him, he had six weeks left in Athens before going back to Australia for the summer. Greece ended up being the place that made the most sense to make the videos in – the DOP he wanted to work with is based there too, and the project was ambitious in that we wanted to do it all on 16mm film, so it would be most cost effective just to fly me somewhere and not a whole team plus equipment.
I thought about it, and the more I did it felt like there was a strange thread between the record and Greece’s hazy, dream-like landscapes. An otherworldliness to it. We agreed to shoot mostly in a way that obscured the Greek-ness of it all and focused on atmosphere and place that could be anywhere — the Greek mountains, Scottish mountains, or Welsh mountains. But just being there I think imbued the videos with this feeling that I had when I was writing the songs – of experiencing something richly and fully for the first time. And I just love Matthew’s ability to tell a story in a set of images, and trusted him completely in our little adventure across the Peloponesse.
OS: You’ve said this album is about healing as a process rather than something you arrive at. Now that the record is finished and heading out into the world, does it feel like part of that process or something separate from it?
EM: It’s adjacent, I think. I was making this record at a time when I was recalibrating a lot of things. And I think one of those things was an emphasis on being process-oriented over outcome-oriented, to give me a sturdier foundation when making things.
It’s very hard to finish things when you’re thinking too much about how the end product will look or be received, so being process oriented keeps me wedded to the doing of the thing instead of preoccupied with what people will think when it’s done.
There’s definitely an echo there in how the record was made and some of the themes the record explores. Even the recording of the album was process-focussed, relying on the confines of tape to force a sort of in-the-moment, performance-based process in the room, where the outcome can’t be overly controlled because what you get that day is just what the record is going to sound like. There’s a way you have to surrender to that. So yeah, I think making the album in itself was something that was teaching me those lessons.
OS: My favorite way to wrap things up — what are you reading, listening to, or watching right now that’s bringing you joy?
EM: I’ve been watching Better Call Saul for the first time and loving it. I’ve also been listening to a Jungian analysis podcast called This Jungian Life where Jungian psychoanalysts dissect fairy tales and folk stories and look at them through a Jungian lens. I don’t dig all of their takes, but I like the depth of symbolism that Jungians have, and how seriously they take images.
I started keeping a dream journal because of them! I am also a religious follower of the The New Yorker Fiction podcast, where the fiction editor at the New Yorker chooses a New Yorker fiction contributor to read a story from the New Yorker archives then analyses it with her. It’s amazing and so inspiring!