FEATURE:
Spotlight
Elanor Moss
_________
WITH the fantastic…
Cosmic E.P. out in the world, it is a perfect time to focus on the tremendous Elanor Moss. There is a beauty, power and atmosphere about Moss’ music that draws you in. It creates and inhibits its own world. New single, Catholic, is from Cosmic. It was co-written with The Howl & The Hum’s Sam Griffiths. It is a gorgeous and potent song that lingers in the mind. As DORK documented:
“On the track, Elanor explained: “’Catholic’ isn’t truly a song about being Catholic, or leaving the Catholic church… not really. It’s a song about grappling with your identity and realising you’ve relied on validation from others most of your life, whether that’s friends, family, or romantic partners. It’s also about realising you have the power to change and doing that.”
“It’s cathartic to play and sing live, and I felt like I was tapping into something new in my writing. We tried recording it a bunch of different ways; acoustically, more lounge-y, slower… it didn’t feel right until it was big and loud. It was an interesting moment for me in my writing and sound. I wanted to be loud for once and see what it was like to be in an indie-rock band. I love it”.
I would urge everyone to go and get the new E.P. from the wonderful Elanor Moss. She has not given too many interviews over the past year, but there are a couple that I wanted to bring in, so that we can find out more about her. I think that Moss is someone who is going to have big success through this year.
Early last year, ourculture spotlighted and spoke with the wonderful Elanor Moss. They asked her about the pandemic and whether it had changed the way she writes and approaches music. I was interested in Moss’ response when she was asked when she started writing songs. I do think that she is one of our very best artists. One that you need to watch very closely:
“Elanor Moss, a singer-songwriter originally from Lincolnshire, started crafting her first body of work while living between York and Leeds as an undergraduate in Medieval Literature. Although she grew up in a musical household, it wasn’t until university that she began writing and performing her own songs as well as collaborating with artists including Benjamin Francis Leftwich, The Howl & the Hum, and Rosie Carney. Ahead of the release of her debut EP, Citrus, last Friday, she had only shared one song, ‘Soundings’, a devastating track that showcased her ability to evoke powerful emotions against spare acoustic instrumentation. As a whole, the 5-track collection, which was co-produced by Brooklyn producer Oli Deakin, further highlights Moss’ knack for intricate, resonant storytelling, dealing with themes of depression, substance abuse, and violence that are offset by lush arrangements and delicate melodies. As dark as her songs can be, Moss always seems aware of achieving that balance – not just in an effort to make them lighter, but also to carve out space for hope and catharsis.
Have the past couple of months changed your perspective on the songs you’ve written or making music in general?
The past year since making the EP, I’ve focused on writing. I haven’t had much time to write recently, I wrote a little bit while I was in isolation but the COVID brain fog is so thick you can barely string sentences together. But the past year, really, was all about craft. The Citrus EP, a lot of it was stream-of-consciousness-y, they’re some of my earliest bits of writing. At that point, it was entirely what I would call instinctual songwriting. But the focus over the past year has been on the craft of it. I think the songwriting that’s on the next record is a little bit more finessed, and trying to find that balance between that instinctive sort of writing that is entirely feeling and the more crafted writing that is a little bit more intentional. I think that’s probably the main difference. I’ve collaborated with a bunch of people, I work a lot with my friend Sam Griffiths of the Howl & the Hum. He helped me write some of the songs that are coming out on the next record. I just feel like I’ve been learning a lot about writing.
Was there a specific moment that made you realize you were interested in writing songs?
I don’t think there was ever like an aha moment. I think that music has always been a form of play, and it’s always been playful in its nature to me. It was always so natural that it never felt like a big reveal. I wrote my first full song when I was in university, I actually came to it some might say relatively late. I started writing songs when I was 18 whilst I was studying English. Before that, I performed a lot and I played guitar a bit and sang. And I’d written – I’d written short stories and scraps of poetry and things like that.
Why do you think songwriting specifically came later on?
That’s a really good question. I’m not sure. I think that songwriting is a very different discipline to short stories and any other kind of writing. And I think that the musical element means that you can communicate something beyond words. For me, that’s the magic of it. As a tool for storytelling, it’s kind of unmatched. There’s a level of, you don’t necessarily need to be explicit to effectively tell a story with a song. And I think that for the sort of confessional vignettes that I was doing at the time, it helped me communicate things that were almost too difficult to say completely explicitly, perhaps. I think it came when I needed it. I don’t know if that sounds weird, but like I said, it’s always been a form of play that is quite natural, the musical aspect of it. Writing songs themselves came a bit later but I think it was necessary at the time, and it was something that had captured my imagination. I was doing it because it was new and exciting, but also a tool for expressing myself at a time when I needed it.
What appeals to you about making music that’s intimate and vulnerable while also focusing on the female gaze?
I think that in the kind of music that I make, the way I’ve described it before, as a woman you don’t often control how men look at you. How you are gazed at determines an awful lot, and there isn’t a lot that you can do about that. But a form of subversion is inviting people to look at you, and inviting people to look at you on your terms, and in a certain way, and in your own words, as it were. And I feel like the kind of music that I make invites you in to look at me in a certain way. And I think that being vulnerable and trying to tell the truth in some ways is a quiet act of resistance and quietly telling your story. Sometimes a whisper is just as effective as a shout, but I think that you need both things. We need Self Esteem to be doing what she’s doing, we need other women who are doing it brashly and loudly – and brash is a word that I’m using in a reclaimed sense. But I also think that there’s room for whispering your truth as well”.
I hope to see Elanor Moss perform live this year. She is playing St Pancras Old Church on 13th February, so that is going to be a wonderful date. In March, For the Rabbits interviewed Moss and asked her about live performances. I can only imagine how magical and evocative her performances are:
“FTR: What can you remember about your first show?
Uhhh… I think it was really terrible. I can’t remember it that well because I was drinking wine out of a plastic bottle backstage to fight the nerves! This must’ve been about five years ago now. I only had about three original songs and I was shaking like a leaf. But, y’know, it’s how you learn! I’m grateful people were willing to take a chance on me to help me get more experience and grow in confidence.
FTR: Why do you make music? Why not another art form?
I’ve always been a storyteller; when I was a kid I loved painting and drawing, and I’ve loved to sing my whole life. I used to write whole-ass short stories as a kid, too, and get my Dad to edit them. For me, though, songwriting, and putting chords together, and creating sounds feels impulsive. Personally, as a storyteller, songwriting is the easiest channel to the “other side”: it’s the easiest way to lift the veil and connect with something bigger than myself. As far as I understand it, every art form offers a way to connect with the commonality of human experience, and in that common experience I think we experience something larger than all of us together, too. If dancing, or painting, or sculpting came to me as naturally as singing and composing and writing did, then I’d do that! But it doesn’t. The combination of writing and music composition together creates something that both forms can’t achieve in isolation of one another. For me, it’s the most effective storytelling tool.
FTR: What can people expect from the Elanor Moss live show?
At the moment, they can expect just me and a guitar, my songs, and some stories from my life that I hope speak to something we have all experienced. Between songs I talk a lot of rubbish and crack a lot of bad jokes. It’s still really early days for me, and in the future I’m looking forward to workshopping a bigger live set-up with some band members”.
As the Citrus E.P. proved, Elanor Moss writes songs that invite you in. Her voice has this ability to buckle the senses. Although her sound has changed slightly since that E.P. was released, many of the elements that made Citrus so wonderful are in Cosmic. On her Bandcamp page, we learn more about the background to the new E.P. from one of our finest voices:
“A follow up in the truest sense of the word, ‘Cosmic’ picks up where ‘Citrus’ left off - finding Moss in a more secure place amidst the aftermath of the events ‘Citrus’ documented. Here the candid autobiographical writer charts her movements through the world, recovering, healing and interrogating some uncomfortable truths.
Decamping to Brooklyn to record the EP with frequent collaborator Oli Deakin (Lowpines, CMAT), with ‘Cosmic’, Moss has delivered a second astounding collection of songs. More assured and complex both musically and lyrically the songs & production are more ambitious as Moss not only explores more musical space but widens the scope of emotions present in the music. Humour & joy sitting just as much at the heart of this EP as introspection and melancholy”.
I am excited to see where Elanor Moss’ career takes her. I think we will get an album maybe later this year, and there is going to be touring demand. A stunning songwriter and artist, here is someone primed for a very long and fruitful career. Go and listen to Cosmic and discover why Elanor Moss is an artist…
WITH very few equals.
______________
Follow Elanor Moss
