by Philip Moss

Let Elanor Moss shake off your fuzzy head with her collection of dark realism

No words can encapsulate a relationship. So, on Sober, Elanor Moss paints her cyclical narrative through colours instead – ‘Your love is the tone of blue and red.’ Channeling the pain, the York songwriter laments relapses into trying to make a former relationship stay afloat – deep down knowing it has gone – but nothing stops the sleepless nights and the brutal knowing that her former love is ‘somewhere not thinking of me.’ 

Although written from the perspective of a friend, Lunar picks up the opener’s late night reflections on the morning after. Cut from the same folk storytelling headspace as Laura Fell’s Safe from Me, it still ends up feeling autobiographical. There are moments of positivity – but the hurt and damage of Sober, and her voice sitting against a lonely plucked guitar leaves Moss, once again, feeling vulnerable. While lead single, Soundings, is still of the same fuzzy headed tone, but melodically more immediate, and feels a close relative of Lael Neale’s aching masterpiece, Acquainted with Night.

That this self-released collection is Moss’ first release makes Citrus even more of a special. Cue the label scramble for her signature to put out her second.

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