Nell Mescal is learning to listen to herself

When I sit down to chat with her in early November, it’s almost exactly four years to the day that she packed her things and moved on her own to London. Coming from a tight-knit Irish family, dropping out of secondary school and leaving home wasn’t an easy choice. In the years since she’s more than found her footing in the city, but that success has also been paired with moments of extreme doubt and fear of watching it all fall away. Now, she says, she thinks she’s finally on the path to having it all figured out.

“When I moved I was just so hell bent on not going back home, not needing anyone, wanting to put one step in front of the other and not be scared and not be sad and not miss anyone,” she says. “Only this year was I like, Oh, it’s actually okay to be all of those things.”

When I sit down to chat with her in early November, it’s almost exactly four years to the day that she packed her things and moved on her own to London. Coming from a tight-knit Irish family, dropping out of secondary school and leaving home wasn’t an easy choice. In the years since she’s more than found her footing in the city, but that success has also been paired with moments of extreme doubt and fear of watching it all fall away. Now, she says, she thinks she’s finally on the path to having it all figured out.

“When I moved I was just so hell bent on not going back home, not needing anyone, wanting to put one step in front of the other and not be scared and not be sad and not miss anyone,” she says. “Only this year was I like, Oh, it’s actually okay to be all of those things.”

Personally and professionally, this year was a landmark one for Mescal. Though she’s been on the scene and consistently releasing since 2023, it feels like this was really the year where she came into her own. In early 2025, she signed to Atlantic Records, and she closed the year with a new EP, The Closest We’ll Get, and a string of headline dates across the UK. Sandwiched in between were slots at festivals, late night shows, studio sessions in New York, and, unforgettably, a gig opening for HAIM at the O2 Arena.

“It was so fun. It was so surprising. It was insane,” Mescal says of joining the sisters on stage. “A few months ago we had talked about it, and then people got busy and we stopped. But, yeah, then the tour was starting on Friday and on a Monday night at 10:00pm I got a text from Alana Haim asking if I was able to start on Friday.” Of course, she said yes. She had no idea if she could afford it or if she could even get the band together, but she knew she’d find a way. And she did.

That must-do attitude has, essentially, been the spirit of Mescal’s career these past four years. She’s doing all she can to make it work at all times — when we meet, for example, she rushes into the cafe with two big guitar cases that she’s going to lug to rehearsal right after — and her life has changed rapidly because of it.

As she’s grown, she’s also naturally gotten to know herself better. And it’s this process of evolution that seems to interest Mescal most from a creative perspective. Her writing is uniquely self-reflective, as much about her analyzing her own growth as analyzing the external forces pulling her one way or another.

“I feel like it’s just lesson after lesson,” she says semi-sarcastically of her twenties so far. There’s lots that Mescal knows she can handle, perhaps her career being first among them. She knows she has the work ethic and the tact to chase what she wants in music. But the rest of it? That’s another story. “Being 22 and navigating relationships and friendships and how to look after myself it’s just… I don’t know… Being in your early twenties is just a trip, and it’s just happening to you,” she says.

The Closest We’ll Get is the latest and best manifestation of that mindset. She began writing on friendship and growth in some of her early singles, but this EP, she says, is her most honest to date. Most of the songs were written in 2024 — though a few even years prior to that, and some were completed just days before she went into the studio to record — about a long-term friendship that frequently flirted with being something more. Each song, she explains, was its own realization, something that had to do with either that relationship or with herself in relation to it. From opener “Middle Man,” the project builds in tension and desperation, mirroring the chaos of wanting someone so badly that you’ll fit yourself into their life in any way you can, even if it’s not good for either of you. By “Sweet Relief,” the EP’s closer, the tension breaks, and Mescal lets herself move on. Finally.

“It was a huge [outlet],” she says. “Even just being able to figure stuff out through the songs. I wrote ‘Middle Man’, like, two years ago, and only now do I feel like I fully understand that song and I fully am in that song.” She laughs, wondering if maybe she’s some kind of psychic or something for writing an EP that preempted a breakup she wasn’t even going through at the time of its conception. I note that there’s a special kind of beauty in writing a song that you can grow into. We both agree that maybe that’s the whole point of the enterprise, anyway.

When it finally came time to record, Mescal packed up once again, this time heading to New York for an intensive week in the studio with producer Philip Weinrobe, a collaborator to folk greats including Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek, and Billie Marten. Working with Weinrobe, Mescal tells me, was a long shot lob. She initially reached out to him just to pick his brain, but after jumping on a call, he invited her to his studio and agreed to come on as an official partner. “It was genuinely my favourite thing that’s ever happened,” she says, beaming. “I tried to talk everyone out of it, because I thought there was no way. Like, I get this thing where I get too excited and I feel really sick. Every Christmas, I’m so sick because I’m so excited. Every tour I get so excited too. It’s just, my adrenaline goes all the way. This was the same. I almost thought I couldn’t do it.”

Within three weeks, Mescal and her guitarist were on a plane. They spent days in the studio, working on a strictly confined schedule. The week was both structured and not, all at once. Studio times were only from 10am to 6pm, allowing for a window in which the team could fully focus and another when they could fully unplug and recharge. But when they were on, they were on. More than that, they were entirely present. Nights were spent walking around Brooklyn, over the bridge, and through the city. She turned 22, biked through central park, sat by the river, went to classic diners, and saw the Statue of Liberty. “It was a perfect, perfect week,” she says.

Everything was organic and done in the room. “There was no listening to anything back. We didn’t have headphones. There was no click,” Mescal explains. “It was literally just like, ‘Did that feel good for everyone?’ If it was, then we’d move on. It was crazy, because I didn’t hear any of these songs back, which has never happened in the history of me.”

With that method, Mescal was able to capture not just her vision but the energy of what she was trying to produce. She was able to get out of her head. It was all physical, it was all there. And in the final recordings, it shows. This body of work feels more effortless than Mescal’s previous releases, giving more while also pulling back in the right places. “I got to be led by my inspiration, which was really, really lovely,” Mescal says.

Though perhaps what this process gave her most was a willingness to trust herself. She’s writing new music, though it doesn’t sound much like The Closest We’ll Get. She knows now, though, that the best comes when she goes with her gut.

Part of that knowing comes not only from her own experiences but also the support network she’s built for herself since moving to London. “I think what’s nice for me is my circle is small, but it’s really strong,” she says. Many of the people she leans on are fellow musicians — her best friend, Irish artist Lucy Blue, she met early on in the transition and hasn’t strayed from since — but just as many are not. That mix, she says, is stabilizing in an industry that can otherwise be mad. And, though she’s away from home, family has been perhaps the biggest stabilizer in her ever-changing life.

She lives currently, for example, with one of her brothers who has never been in “the industry” at all. Her other brother, Paul, has had his own breakout as an actor over the past few years. Often, they’ll laugh together when they realize that neither of them really knows how to approach all the big things coming their way. “I don’t feel too stressed by it all because I’m so small, but even when I do, we’ll talk about it and he doesn’t even have the answers,” she laughs. “We’re all just like, ‘I have no idea what’s going on.’” In times of uncertainty, she knows they have each other. “In the moments where I’ve gotten really scared, I have [those] four people at home,” she says of her family.

Becoming friends with uncertainty, Mescal says, is on her bucket list for this next year. She’s locked down what she needed to lock down from her early years out of the house, and now, she tells me, she wants to burst her world wide open. She wants to go out more, make her set of experiences wider, and just soak in what life has to offer. That, she says, is her challenge to herself. Most of all, she wants to keep listening to herself.

“Going with your gut feeling is something I struggle with, because if you have anxiety, you always get gut feelings, and you never know if it’s the one that you should follow or not,” she explains to me. “I’ve been really trying to figure out which voice to listen to at the moment. But [this recording process] was a perfect example of realizing I can trust myself a lot more than I think I can.”