The Knife, The Needle is a perfectly formed gem from Elanor Moss

The sound of The Knife, The Needle – orbiting around Moss’ agile classical guitar – is predominantly hazy and soft. However, there is a real bite to the London-based songwriter’s utterly mesmerising ruminations on loneliness and distance, unstable relationships, falteringly uncertain happiness and the uneasy realisation that the more you get to know someone, the more there remains to be discovered.

Moss reportedly recorded more peppily crowded versions of these nine songs in New York, but ultimately decided to craft another, sparser, more intimately lonesome version of the album, more keenly attuned to the old weird spirit of British folk and psych-folk. A good call: there isn’t exactly an acute shortage of introspective troubadours armed with a resonantly yearning voice, expert skills in acoustic fingerpicking, and an aura of effortlessly natural authenticity at the moment (see Juni Habel’s Evergreen In Your Mind for another recent landmark release in this style), but the combination of Moss’ voice and guitar (recorded up close: many songs conclude with the sound of Moss’ exhaling sigh) and the unobtrusively swirling string and horn arrangements create a genuinely distinct, enticingly otherworldly musical identity that could have been crafted at any point during the past century.

Then again, songs of this calibre would most likely impress in any arrangement. It’s futile to pick favourites among the uniformly strong patch, but the time-lapsed narrative of a volatile relationship from the initial encounter ("you’re so gentle, baby") to a disturbing pattern of abuse and violence ("we fight until the morning sun…the worst that was said and done is chased out of the room") that propels “Sarah Waiting In The Car” (decorated with pastoral strings enticingly at odds with the song’s foreboding if breathtakingly pretty unease) feels like a vintage classic that’s only just been unearthed. Same applies to “You Are Coming Home Tonight”, a beautifully cascading account of a long-awaited reunion shadowed by unarticulated disquiet (|I’ve been having trouble speaking/what’s been on my mind?"), circled by blurry horns reminiscent of Tom Waits’ misshapen balladry. In contrast to the album’s overarching air of buried secrets and hidden thoughts, there’s room for levity here too, notably the giddy if melancholy longing of “Clothes in a Motel Sink” ("picked up one of those self-help books you read/it only reminds me how much help I need").

A cursory listen may misleadingly present The Knife, The Needle as a cosy, cuddly listen, but these songs have teeth; allow them to fully sink in, and Moss emerges as an undisputed master in a populated field.