Foto-© Vivien von Glischinski
Am vergangenen Freitag veröffentlichte die irische Singer-Songwriterin Nell Mescal ihre zweite EP The Closest We’ll Get. Aufgenommen und produziert wurde sie von Philip Weinrobe (Adrienne Lenker, Billie Marten) in dessen New Yorker Studio. Für Nell eine ganz besondere Erfahrung, die sie auf komplett neue Weise herausgefordert hat. Doch ihre Komfortzone zu verlassen ist für die 22-Jährige nichts Neues. Mit nur 18 Jahren entschied sie sich dazu, für ihre Musikkarriere aus der irischen Kleinstadt nach London zu ziehen. Das erste Jahr war dabei vor allem davon geprägt, sich in diesem neuen Leben zurechtzufinden. Insbesondere Songs ihrer ersten EP Can I Miss It For A Minute? entstanden vor ebendiesem Hintergrund. Die Jahre der Veränderung, das Verlassen des Elternhauses, Erwachsenwerden, Freundschaften, die sich verändern – das alles verarbeitet Nell in gefühlvollen Texten kombiniert mit Indie-Folk-Klängen.
Wir haben sie im vergangenen Monat auf dem Reeperbahn Festival zum Interview getroffen und konnten über die neue EP sprechen, aber auch über ihre Anfänge, den Umzug nach London und ihre Begeisterung für Filme.
A few years ago, you moved to London by yourself to pursue your music career. You were still quite young when you did that. What was that experience like, and what helped you in those moments when you felt really homesick?
It’s funny because I have a really different perspective on it now. Now I would say it was really daunting and I almost get scared for my younger self. I was quite stubborn, I’m very stubborn still, but I was even more stubborn then. I was like: “I’m going to get through it, no matter what” – and I did. Being on the other side of it, I’m like, “This was really difficult.” I think in the most homesick moments, I retreated even further into myself, rather than being like “I can go home whenever I want, and that’s okay”, I was like “no, I’m staying here and I’m pushing through it.” Now I would just go home when I wanted to and spend time with my parents. It was chaos, but it was good, and I made it out alive [laughs].
You used to live with other musician housemates. I remember that you used to live with Katie Gregson-MacLeod, right? Did it help you to be surrounded by people who were pursuing a similar career or a similar path as you?
Yeah, I definitely think so. I used to live with my best friend Lucy Blue as well, who is an amazing artist, too. We were just talking about this the other day, because I write very differently to both of them. Katie writes all the time, and when we lived together, she was always writing. Same with Lucy. Lucy was always in her room on the computer and building stuff. And I was still trying to figure out how to be a human being and trying to settle into what my life was. I think about them a lot when I’m writing at home now, and just about the fire that they have. So, it was definitely very inspiring.
Are you ever surprised by your own vulnerability when you’re writing songs?
Sometimes. Not all the time. I think, usually, I am aware of what is going to come out of my mouth. But specifically with my song Thin, I absolutely was. I threw my phone across the room when I wrote the first verse. I was like: “I don’t wanna do this.” I think that day I started to write about something completely different, and then all of a sudden, I was writing about something that I was really scared of.
What made you change your mind and continue to work on the song?
I think I was just like fuck it [laughs]. I know that I started writing it for a reason, so I should delve into it. I know that some people could listen to that and go: “That’s not how it works” – but it kind of is. You sometimes don’t know what is going to come out of your mouth, and then you just feel something, and then you say it, and then you have to think about what you said, and you try to make sense of it. It unlocks a lot of things, and that is where the therapeutic aspect comes from. You start talking to yourself, as if you’re talking to your friend who is asking for advice.
What are your favorite lyrics that you’ve ever written?
I think it’s “Confusing friends for lovers, ‘Cause they treat me like a human.” One of my friends came up to me and said that she thinks about that lyric all the time. And I kinda think about it a lot too, because it was quite shocking for me to ever admit that to anyone. It became one of those that I like because it doesn’t feel like I wrote it. There is a lot like on the new EP, I have a line where I just say, “you’re fucking lazy, you always were.” So, for lots of different reasons, lots of different ones!
You talk about your love for movies and TV shows a lot. Has there ever been a piece of media that influenced your songwriting?
Yes! The Worst Person In The World. I talk about this movie all the time, but it was one of those movies that I watched when I first moved to London, and I had no friends. So, I literally went every single day for a week to watch this movie. I would walk around listening to Waters of March by Art Garfunkel because of the soundtrack. That movie, for my artist project, resonates because I often think about how to set the boundary up between myself as a human and myself the artist on stage, because there is no mask. I wear the same clothes that I wear out on stage, and I talk very candidly between songs. I am very myself. In that movie, she is exactly who she says she is, and even when she doesn’t know who she is, she is still talking about that. But then, there is the moment in the movie when she flicks the light switch, and all of a sudden, we don’t know what is real and what is not. I am trying to figure out a way to work that into my art as much as I can. To slowly have some walls up. Not too much, walls with sheer curtains or something [laughs]. So, I think that movie really affected how I write, how I view myself.
What does your songwriting process usually look like? Do you prefer to just write by yourself, alone in your room, or with other people? And what comes first, the melodies or the lyrics?
A mixture of everything for all of them. I love writing with other people, cause there is an element of surprise there. It’s almost like a thrill, because what if we don’t get anything? What if I’m really bad or whatever? But usually, it is really fun. I wrote a song last night, and I hadn’t written by myself in a while, so I was like “oh my god, I’m never gonna write again.” But then I wrote something that genuinely felt so me. I love literally just having a conversation with myself. A lot of the time, it’ll be a collection of notes that I’ve written, and I’ll try a melody. Just trying to fit it to whatever suits it, but it’s different every time.
Do you collect little bits and ideas in your notes app and then just go from there?
Literally yes. If I’m going on a writing trip, I’ll have this massive note just saying random stuff that I’m thinking about. Then, in each session, I can choose something to use as a prompt.
Could you ever imagine writing for someone else?
I think I would love to be that good. Songwriters are crazy talented! The people who write for different people every day are so amazing! They’re like water, they just really flow with everything. I don’t think I am able for that, and I am not talking shit about myself, but there’s a different level. Maybe I’ll get there someday, but at the moment I’ve got too much to say for myself. I’m too much of a yapper [laughs].
Is there a songwriter that you’d really love to work with?
You know what, I talk about her every day, but me and Lucy [Blue], my best friend – it’s time we write a song together. It’s almost like we’re too close, we’d just start talking shit and wouldn’t get anything done, but it would be something really beautiful to document this moment in our lives. So genuinely her, everyone else scares me, but she scares me in a different way [laughs].
You played Reading and Leeds Festival this year, such great festivals! Was that ever something you were looking forward to when you started making music? Was there a certain venue or festival you really wanted to play one day?
I didn’t grow up really knowing much about the world of music. I even only found out what Glastonbury was a few years ago. And now I’m like, I need to play Glastonbury. I think my dream venue is probably the 3Arena in Ireland. They all become dreams. I have these vision boards on my wall, and the biggest thing in the world will be on there, but then I’ll do all the things that are on the ladder to it. This is why the big thing is on my wall. You don’t get to do the big thing without doing all the smaller things. And most things I have done so far have felt very “pinch me.”
Your EP The Closest We’ll Get is coming out next month. Can you tell me a little bit about the process of making it? You recorded in New York, right? When did you start working on the songs for it? What ties all of them together?
The first song I wrote for it was almost three years ago. I never thought it was going to be part of a project. All of a sudden, I just started writing these other songs, and I realized all men are the same [laughs] – so they kind of all go together. But I genuinely had the time of my life recording it. Writing it was very hard, sad. I was very much in the thick of it during all these songs, more so than I had ever been before. Every single one of these songs came from a realization, and it felt like a different emotion towards each song, which had never happened to me. It almost felt like different chapters of a book. And then recording it almost felt like we were putting the spine together. You know in Little Women, when they are making the book and you’re watching it – that’s what the recording felt like because it was just such a beautiful experience. The best musicians I’ve worked with, really incredible people. And as much as the songs felt like I had grown up a little bit, I’ve never felt more like a little baby recording it because I was just so in awe. It felt like going back to being a little choir kid in school. It was really, really lovely. I had the time of my life!
How many weeks were you there?
We – and this is how crazy Philip [Weinrobe] is, because he is a wizard – we recorded six songs in three days, and they weren’t long days, they were from 10 till 6. We weren’t allowed to wear headphones. We weren’t allowed to listen to anything back. No one knew the songs before we would play them, so me and my guitarist Charlie would play them acoustically, then everyone would join in. My song The Closest We’ll Get was the first one we recorded. I just met everyone, and an hour later, I sang the worst I had ever sung in my entire life because I was so nervous, and everyone was joining in. There is that really beautiful violin in the very beginning, Zosha started playing that, and I turned around and I went: “Oh my god, oh my god, I’m gonna cry.” I know that this could be really special. It was such a crazy experience, I wished it was weeks and weeks.
That sounds incredible, it’s kind of like you’re experiencing your own music too.
Literally! And I was experiencing how relieved I was that I was through the worst of this heartbreak and that I was actually able to create something pretty out of it, rather than just so devastating. So, I was experiencing something along with everyone, which is a really nice feeling, rather than just trying to get everything done.
This summer, you already played some acoustic shows. What was it like playing some of the new songs and seeing people’s reactions?
It’s been really lovely because, as much as I like the songs when they’re full band, they sound exactly as you want them. Playing them acoustically is also really fun because you just get to focus exactly on the story. We’re doing a headline full-band tour at the end of the year, and I’m so excited for that. We’re going to make it feel as close to the recording as possible. I just love playing live, I get the biggest buzz from it!
Amazing! I do hope that you will get to extend the Europe tour, and we’ll see you back in Germany very soon! Thank you so much for talking to me today!
