This is so heartbreakingly sad. Nell Smith, the teenage girl from Leeds who recorded a stunning album of Nick Cave cover versions with Flaming Lips, has died at the age of 17.
Tragically, Nell was kiilled in a car accident, eerily echoing this video for her remarkable version of Cave’s elegiac song Girl In Amber – and, of course, eerily echoing his own teenage son Arthur’s accidental death when he was 15.
It’s hard to watch now.
Nell, whose family had moved to Canada when she was five, had just finished her first solo record, due for release on Bella Union early next year.
She was only 14 when she recorded her album of Cave covers, Where The Viaduct Looms, backed by her favourite band.
She first saw Flaming Lips when she was ten, in a front row seat with her brother Ike. A year later Nell saw them again at a festival – this time dressed as a parrot, singing Space Oddity back to him from the front of the crowd.
She managed to meet front man Wayne Coyne, who encouraged her to learn the guitar and kept in touch with her dad Jude while she began playing and singing.
What’s remarkable about the covers album is that it was entirely Coyne’s idea. Ater a planned session to record her own songs had to be cancelled because of Covid, he asked her to listen to Nick Cave and email him vocal recordings of her favourite ones.
“I hadn’t heard of Nick Cave,” she said, “but Wayne suggested that we should start with an album of his cover versions, and then look at recording some of my own songs later. It was cool to listen and learn about Nick Cave and pick the songs we wanted to record.”
When he heard this himself, Nick Cave took to his website The Red Hand Files to write: “This version of ‘Girl in Amber’ is just lovely, I was going to say Nell Smith inhabits the song, but that’s wrong, rather she vacates the song, in a way that I could never do.
“I always found it difficult to step away from this particular song and sing it with its necessary remove – just got so twisted up in the words, I guess. Nell shows a remarkable understanding of the song, a sense of dispassion that is both beautiful and chilling. I just love it. I’m a fan.”
Heartbreakingly, Nell’s last Instagram post at the weekend said: “Knock knock! Just popping in to let everyone know my new album is mixed and mastered and I can’t wait to share it with you all!!!!”
Announcing her death in a statement, her family urged people to “Hold your kids extra tight tonight.”
RIP Nell Smith (2007-2024)