Nell Smith

Nell Smith was born in Leeds on July 17, 2007, and grew up in Canada. Her parents are huge fans of the Flaming Lips, and whenever Wayne Coyne's band plays anywhere near them, they never miss the chance to see them live. They always bring little Nell along, and to make her stand out they dress her up in a parrot costume. Coyne can't help but notice, and at some point he starts spotting her in the crowd, until one night in 2019, in Calgary, he even decides to duet with her, when she's just twelve years old: him shut inside the bubble he uses to float over the heads of the audience, her perched on her dad's shoulders. The parents even get to meet the band in person, and in the following months Nell's father keeps Coyne constantly updated on the little girl's vocal progress, as she nurtures her dream of becoming a singer.

In 2022 the dream comes true: Nell, then fifteen, records a whole album together with the Flaming Lips! It's "Where The Viaduct Looms", a collection of covers of Nick Cave. Meanwhile Nell grows up, and devotes herself with great care to preparing what would become her true solo debut, the one we now hold in our hands.

It would be an insanely beautiful story, if it weren't for the fact that another dramatic tragedy looms over the great book of rock history. Right at its finest moment, on October 6, 2024, in Alberta, Canada, little Smith's dreams come to a permanent halt because of a car accident that turns out to be fatal. The terrible news shakes both the Flaming Lips and the management of Bella Union, the label that posthumously releases "Anxious", ten tracks that sum up Nell's 17 years of life, songs through which the very young singer-songwriter recounts the uncertainties of a teenager, with the support of Jack and Lily Wolter of Penelope Isles, who took part in the making and production of the album, recorded in Brighton at Bella Union's studios. "Anxious" also includes three songs Nell had written together with the Canadian folk group Shred Kelly, which lend a certain bucolic aftertaste to Smith's indie-pop approach.

A songwriting style that's still a bit raw in places (and rightly so) but one in which you can already glimpse crystal-clear talent and an approach that's offbeat in its own way, hardly aligned with the mainstream standards one might expect from a seventeen-year-old girl, and instead drawn to the kind of crooked experimentalism typical of the Flaming Lips themselves. The folk leanings that characterize the first part of the record are enriched in the second half by further elements, like the rhythm that livens up "Boy In A Bubble" (fittingly, about the encounter that started it all) and "Billons Of People", the dream-pop that makes "I Know Nothing" a pivotal moment on the record, or the strings that give an epic stride to the opening of the closing "Split In The Sky". All proceeds from the sales of "Anxious" will be donated to the Nell Smith Memorial Fund, which aims to support the artistic growth of emerging musicians. For more information, you can visit the GoFundMe page.