2025 has possibly been the best year in Nell Mescal’s career. In October alone, she released her second EP, The Closest We’ll Get, marking her first major label release under Atlantic, and embarked on an arena tour supporting HAIM. The EP can only be described as beautiful in every way, with Mescal’s vocals and the instruments that back her remaining near-flawless throughout. The singer-songwriter manages to strike a delicate balance between soul-bearing vulnerability and a sense of optimism, a quality also reflected in her personal demeanour.
As she prepared to embark on a headline tour of her own, Mescal discussed her lyricism, production process, and the various changes she has experienced since the release of her first single five years ago.
One of the biggest changes for Mescal recently has been the size of the venues she’s playing: her support slot with HAIM was the first time she had completed a full arena tour, a milestone on the bucket list of most artists. “I did one arena before in the states which was really exciting, but being on a full tour is very, very different, and it was just so fun, I’m so sad it’s over”. For some, the prospect of playing to a huge room filled by over 20,000 people would be daunting, but Mescal’s speciality is connection, something clearly established with her audience at HAIM’s Co-Op Live stop in particular.
“It’s always nice to see even one or two people that are singing back to me,” Mescal states. “I’ve supported HAIM before, so I recognise a lot of the people. It’s nice to go back and be able to experience that with them again because I know that they’re just so happy for me to be able to do something like that”. All the more happy, it can be assumed, since the announcement came as a surprise just one day before the tour kicked off on the same day as the release of The Closest We’ll Get. This led Mescal to take to social media to reference HAIM’s latest album by saying “I quit everything I’m doing to join the HAIM tour! I quit not being on tour with HAIM! I quit not playing arenas with HAIM!”
“It was really late”, Mescal admits. “We had talked about it a couple of months ago and then I got a text [from Alana Haim] on the Monday night like four days before, asking if I wanted to join the tour. I was like, absolutely, but how the hell am I going to make this work? My manager was on a football pitch and trying to sort out travel and all the other different things that go into a tour. We did a rehearsal on the Thursday, I had just met the violin player who joined us for the week. It was the most insane turnaround, but also I think that’s what made it so fun because we weren’t expecting to be there, so then every day you wake up and you can’t quite believe it”.
Despite the logistical challenges involved, Mescal seems to thrive under pressure: at this year’s Leeds Festival, she informed her audience that her band had only met a week before the set, before delivering an impressive and cohesive set that sounded like a band who’d been playing stages together for years. “It’s been a really fun and strange year in that aspect,” Mescal says, “but I think now we’re kind of settled in”.
This spells good things, then, for her upcoming tour, which is due to make a stop at Manchester’s Deaf Institute, seeing Mescal return to a venue and a city she’s no stranger to. “I love Manchester. I feel like I’ve got quite a beautiful connection with it now, and my guitarist Charlie went to college there for years so every time we’re back doing anything, he’ll take me to everywhere he went when he was in college. So, for some reason, it also feels like somewhere that I’m really connected to. It’s such a cool city, it’s got such a wonderful vibe, and everyone that comes to my shows in Manchester is just the sweetest”.
The tour, naturally, is in support of her recent EP. When questioned about its title, Mescal explained that “The Closest We’ll Get is one of the tracks from the EP, and I was so emotional on the day we wrote that song that, when I left the sessions, I felt it was going to be important. It’s funny, I wrote one of the lyrics after supporting HAIM for the first time”, presumably for their 2023 headline show at London’s All Points East. “When I wrote that song”, Mescal proclaims, “it just felt like it summed up a lot of how I felt about this other person and the situation [that the EP centres around] and when we started putting the tracks together, it was the only name I could think of that would make so much sense to me”.
The Closest We’ll Get, as previously noted, marks Mescal’s first release as a major label artist, under Atlantic. “It’s nice to have more people to help and answer questions when I have no idea what the fuck is going on”, Mescal smirks, “and they’re people that have worked really hard and know exactly how to help. I worked with such an amazing creative team at Atlantic to make everything down to the font of the vinyl, and all these things that so much thought goes into. It’s nice to have a team that I really trust to help me with that”.
Another member of the team put together for The Closest We’ll Get was Philip Weinrobe — a producer with a highly impressive catalogue behind him. “He’s just a wizard”, Mescal affirms. “I’ve been the biggest fan of his for so long, and he did two of my favourite records with Adrianne Lenker. At first I was like, I would love to just do a Zoom call with him, thinking he’d never want to record the EP with me, but it would be lovely just to pick his brain. And then I jumped on a call with him, and he was like, “when are we making the EP in New York?” I went over and we recorded all six songs in three days, completely live with no headphones. I wasn’t allowed to listen to anything back until the fourth day, so I had no idea how any of it sounded. It was the most incredible experience; it was just so exciting, so thrilling. I was so much nicer to myself during the recording because I couldn’t hear it back, so I couldn’t be mean to myself and I was thinking more about whether it felt good”.
“I think unknowingly that made the songs sound a bit more optimistic, because when I wrote the demos they were really not optimistic, and they’re not as bright and they’re not as loud as the recorded versions. They’re all really quiet and really, really stripped back, and even though it is a live recording there’s so much texture in this EP. I think it allowed for a lot more space, and I think now when I listen to the songs, ‘The Closest We’ll Get’ is supposed to be this really sad song but to me it’s not sad anymore. It’s got this beautiful life of its own and the bass movement is so light. It feels like you’re going through all of your emotions and letting it all out”.
With honesty and vulnerability comes risks, however. “Specifically on this EP, the songs are about a friend of mine, so I had to think about keeping our relationship okay after”, Mescal acknowledges. “There’s definitely a lot of thought that goes into it, but I do feel like I don’t know how to write songs in any other way. Sometimes that freaks me the fuck out; when I released ‘Thin’ earlier this year, I didn’t realise how much of myself was in that song until it was too late and the song was out”.
‘Thin’ centres around self-depreciation and body image, featuring staggering lines such as “We talk until I’m sure that you’re thinking you’d love me more if I looked different, so I’ll get thin and let everyone call it a relief” and questioning “If I get small enough, can I fit inside your head forever, or will I just become a shadow of somebody I preferred better?”. Mescal doesn’t regret being so open, however, stating “That’s the beauty of it, and if I think too hard about it I feel like I’m doing a disservice to the feelings that I want to put out there”.
Another topic Mescal is happy to open up on is her experience of moving from Maynooth, a town in the north of County Kildare, to pursue music in London. “I moved four years ago this week, so I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It’s definitely changed my life in a massive way. I probably would still be making music if I hadn’t moved, but I don’t think I’d be making the music that I’m making now. It’s really exciting to me that I don’t know what music I’m going to be making in a year’s time, and I don’t know where I’m going to be in a year’s time. I do feel like no matter what I would have found my way, but it’s been nice to do it surrounded by other people that are also trying to find their way in the exact same way that I’m doing it”.
Nell Mescal might not know what she’ll be making, or even where she’ll be, in a year’s time, but her fans can rest easy in the knowledge of the excitement she feels looking to the future. If The Closest We’ll Get is anything to go by, fans can also have faith in the quality of future material: the EP features some of her best work, as well as some of the best work released so far this year. Her upcoming tour will be the perfect way to experience the talent and vulnerability of a truly exceptional individual first-hand, in intimate settings she’s bound to graduate from soon.
