Crooked Words #18: Elanor Moss, Emma Ruth Rundle, Damien Jurado & Lilly Miller

Elanor Moss – Sarah Waiting in the Car

In the complicated tangle of our lives, it's rarely either just light or shade. All of the elements that we build ourselves up from – that make us who we are – drift, flicker, and snap between the two. The dark informs the light, and vice versa; all the rainbows and the rain.

The Knife, The Needle is Elanor Moss' documentation of this relationship through the lens of her own world. A collection of nine songs that "concerns itself with the way relationships between people are transformed, complicated, and troubled by love", the forthcoming LP had a suitably unstable journey itself. Having first recorded a version of the songs in New York, Elanor ended up starting over, reshaping the whole thing in a cabin in the Scottish Highlands, a move that brought a "quieter, weirder" form to the songs.

Those characteristics strongly inform Moss' new single 'Sarah Waiting in the Car', the conjuring spell of her voice drawing you into the heart of a story that presents itself as one thing before subtly skewing itself into a new form. That transition, placed inside a song that rolls out like a detailed and haunting short story, is reminiscent of Raymond Carver's ability to spin sentiments in a heartbeat, and Carver himself is a writer that Moss references in the album's foreword as being fundamental in her recovery journey back to making music.

Beautifully intriguing and spectral, layered by the dust that settles upon a still life, it's a truly evocative piece of music, one that seems to sit within a different type of light each time you return to it.

The full album is released August 21st, via Merge Records.

Emma Ruth Rundle – Powerless

After hearing and reading about the forthcoming new album from Emma Ruth Rundle, I went back to spend some time with 2021's Engine Of Hell LP, the last studio album we heard from Emma.

It felt strange to step back into the shadows of that album's world. I loved it then and now, although its been a long time since I stepped into its world. I spoke to Emma at the time of its release for a sprawling interview feature in our physical publication, and it's a conversation that stayed with me over the years, for a number of reasons. Equally raw, sad, and complex as the music she was talking about at that time, I remember being deeply moved by it all, both what she had gone through to make Engine of Hell, and what it had taken from her. It felt like she was running on empty, unsure of what would come after, if anything.

It's taken five years – and there have been a scattering of recordings released in the time since – but it's heartening to hear Emma's voice again here, ready to share another full-blooded body of work with the world. Where Engine of Hell was scorched and skeletal, new single 'Powerless', taken from new album These Killing Times (released September 18th), brings dense and heaving potency back to the forefront, the restraint lasting all of 45-seconds before the voice soars, the drums crash and the fire ignites.

As complex as all that comes before, it's a moving, difficult, enthralling piece of music, and all the more richly rewarding for those things.

Damien Jurado & Lilly Miller

Even in our own considered pockets of this world, in which we're apparently more connected than ever before, everything has become so fragmented, so guided by the luck of the algorithm, that one of your very favourite songwriters can release a new album without you knowing a single thing about it.

Thankfully, I organically stumbled upon Did Something in Me Break, the beautiful new collaborative album from Damien Jurado, in which he weaves little breaths of his own song alongside newcomer-of-sorts Lilly Miller. Across its 20 tracks, which describes itself as a "tapestry of an album", the pair weave their work together, stepping in and out of the spotlight in beautifully endearing ways.

Jurado fronts 7 of the album's 20 songs, but his contributions mostly last less than sixty-seconds, appearing as transient glimpses into a far bigger picture. Miller's voice is the prominent one, and as unconventional as that balance might be, the songs themselves are no less effective.

The mood is slight throughout, sentiments drift into quiet afternoon air, hollow night skies, and through it all Miller's craft reveals itself as something deeply affecting. Cello and fiddle accompany the subtle acoustic playing, while a variety of backing singers gently fold themselves into the space around Miller's own poignant voice, like a cast of characters we never quite get to see but feel the importance of.

Jurado's three more fully-realised songs are all suitably engaging, with the swelling, shimmering beauty of 'Spokane' a true stand-out, however it's on songs like 'Ancient Ritual', 'Anna' and 'Cathedral' – the one song here that lists either songwriter with a full feature credit – where the storytelling of Miller grows above all context to gather this ragged collection of strands into something vital.

An unhurried, unconventional gem, it's a gentle, and gently considered, masterwork, which I feel lucky to have found.