The Way That It Feels is the latest release from London-based Elanor Moss. Delicate, tuneful classical guitar unfolds over the captured sounds of birdsong while her fluid voice ranges high and low in a beautifully haunting melody. Her vocal performance is intimate, elegant and graceful. Brilliantly perceptive and devastatingly honest, Moss’s words highlight a disarming truth: “Oh and the way that it feels // To know you // Oh and the way it reveals // I don’t know you.” No matter how much love we give or for how long, regardless of the level of intimacy or the intensity of our feelings, there will always be parts of another that are unknowable, beyond our reach.
Produced and directed by filmmaker Matthew Thorne, the video is the second in a series made in the Greek Peloponnese and shot on 16mm film with cinematographer Tasos Chatzis. The result is as artful as Elanor Moss’s songwriting.
The single features on Moss’s debut album, The Knife, The Needle, due out on 21st August on Merge Records. The album explores the impact of love on relationships and the way it transforms and complicates our connections. Moss reflects on the song and its place on the album: “This was the last song written for the album, and feels to me like it sums up the spirit of the record. The more I learn about love, the less I know; the more I know about someone, the more I know I don’t know them. It feels like an appropriate last song for an album about paradoxes; love asks us to hold contradiction without giving in to its discomfort. A song about not turning away, but turning towards.” Simply, this is gorgeous: fine songcraft and composition, elevated by a truly beautiful vocal from Elanor Moss. Be absorbed.
