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Nell Mescal is stubborn and impatient. Or so she claims, at any rate. From where I’m sitting, opposite the Irish singer-songwriter in a north London café, the 22-year-old comes across as thoughtful and easy-going. But, she insists, it is stubbornness that defines her personality and impatience that makes her music what it is. “It’s exciting to release songs as soon as you’ve written and recorded them,” says the County Kildare native, toying variously with the sleeves of a thick red cardigan and her many rings. “I’ll leave the studio and be like, ‘I love this song so much. I just want people to hear it now.’”
Perhaps it’s the fact that she and her brother Donnacha have lately been flat-hunting in London, a process that is enough to drive even the saintliest of souls to impatience. Perhaps it’s the same ambition that has spurred the meteoric rise of her other brother, the actor Paul (her senior by seven years). Or perhaps it’s the natural result of recent successes that have seen Mescal supporting Haim on their UK tour and releasing The Closest We’ll Get, her second EP.
The tour was a “crazy”, surprising experience, she says. “The scariest part of doing this job is not knowing what’s coming next, and not knowing if you’re going to have a job tomorrow,” she says. “The most exciting part is you don’t know on a Monday night that you’ll be on a Haim tour in four days.”
There is an agreeable impatience in the EP’s six songs, a collection of yearning ballads in which Mescal contends with the highs and lows of her relationships, supported by light-touch arrangements of piano, guitar and strings. Her focus flits from romantic liaisons to friendship break-ups – including some “really, really horrible ones”. I tell her I’m not sure I’ve ever had a friendship break-up. “Well, you’re lucky,” she says, attributing her own to dropping in and out of school before eventually leaving her hometown of Maynooth. “[I always come back to] friendship break-ups because they ask so many questions of you.”
Regular break-ups are source material too. At a concert at Islington Assembly Hall in November, Mescal asked the crowd if anyone wanted to hear a happy song, before apologising for perhaps having too few. “I do care about making sure that not every song in my discography is utter despair,” she says, admitting with a cautious smile that she considers herself “hugely emotional”. “I’ve always said if there’s at least one hopeful thing in a song, that’s the thing that I’m looking for,” she says. “Even if that’s the drum beat or a breath.”
Mescal has never not been ambitious. Growing up, she aspired to every profession before eventually settling on music. “I wanted to be Annie on Broadway,” she says. “The fact that my parents didn’t fly me over to audition is my biggest grievance with them.” She started writing songs at 14 and recording them when she was 16, eventually dropping out of school a year later to move to England and pursue an artistic career. Her parents, who met on an amateur production of The Pirates of Penzance, took about 20 minutes to be convinced of this plan. She found allies in her “really creative” brothers, particularly in the trajectory of Paul. “Never say never” is how she describes the prospect of collaborating with him on music, but her sights are rightly set on forging her own path.
Despite primarily being a pianist, she has lately been writing songs on her guitar. “My favourite vocal takes have always just been on a voice memo on my phone. Or a singing video that I posted on Instagram.” That rawness informed The Closest We’ll Get, which was produced by Brooklyn-based Philip Weinrobe, who has worked with Adrianne Lenker, Lake Street Dive and Alanis Morissette. “Nell’s songwriting talent is as natural and easy-going as anyone you can imagine, but her real strength is the maturity of her collaborative voice in the studio – a wonderfully open mind and heart with a keen sense of her own vision,” says Weinrobe. “This is a difficult balance to strike for anyone, let alone someone just beginning their recording journey.”
Next in Mescal’s sights is a full-length album. “It’s something that I’ve been working on for quite a while now – figuring out when I’m going to do it, what I’m going to say.” She seems, momentarily, to have forgotten her impatience. “I’m starting to feel like I understand myself a lot more. And because of that, the songs are so different every single time I go to write.”
Talent, Nell Mescal at Viva London. Hair, Ami Fujita. Make-up, Victoria Martin. Photographer’s assistant, Ho Hai Tran. Special thanks to Oisín Rogers at the The Devonshire Soho
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