Nell Davies : The End of the World or Whatever

(Self Released)

CD/DL/Streaming

Out 27th September

Buy Here

Nell Davies, the Penzance based singer-songwriter is set to release new single The End of the World or Whatever. Iain Key listens for LTW, premieres the video and chats to the artist…

Nell Davies is what I guess you could class as late developer when it comes to becoming a recording artist, although in fairness LTW’s Ged Babey did wait until his 60th Birthday.  Inspired by Viv Albertine’s autobiography during lockdown to buy a guitar and write her first song, she hasn’t looked back since.

It’s been three years since she released her debut single, Happy Birthday (not a cover of the Altered Image’s classic) which was followed by A Sad Kind of Freedom, a track which you could imagine being a staple on mixtapes compiled by Indie Kids in the 1980’s. Since late 2023 she’s been out and about doing gigs, in Cornwall and further afield plus a couple of festivals.

New single, The End of the World or Whatever, is ‘a bittersweet number about lost friendship and feeling very sad but being very brave about it,’ has been a while coming but is worth the wait.

Listening to this and the other tracks on her EP there’s a clear growth in confidence, both in songwriting and performance. Nell’s songs previously have been described as ‘cheery and sickly-sweet’ and as having a ‘wry smile and a dry sense of humour,’ which fits with my first and subsequent listens of this single, reminding me of those Kirsty MacColl songs which went on to be performed by Tracey Ullman.

You can catch Nell live over the next couple of weeks

1st October – Verdant Brewery and Taproom, Penryn (supporting Evan Dando and Chapterhouse) Tickets here 

10th October – Fish Factory, Penryn (along with Shy Creatures, Tremoans, October Club and Jimmy Bullet) Tickets here

You can find Nell via her website and on Bandcamp 

INTERVIEW

LTW: Hello Nell, how are you?

Nell Davis: Very well thank you, mustn’t grumble

Louder Than War: Looking through the archives the first time we played you on Louder Than War Radio was March 2022… how long after being inspired to buy your first guitar did you start writing/recording songs?

ND: It was immediate – I only ever bought a guitar as a vehicle for writing my own songs. I’d actually tried to learn guitar as a teenager, but it was a total failure because I couldn’t bring myself to play anyone else’s songs – the thought of it made me cringe. So I learned a few chords, and then I didn’t have a clue what to do with them, decided I was totally unmusical, and gave up for a couple of decades.

My second attempt at learning guitar, in Sept 2020, was after the invention of Google and YouTube, so I could ask the internet how to write a song and get started right away. Turns out music theory is all just maths, and I’m good at maths. And lyrics are easy because by the time I got to late 2020 I had a lot of pent-up shit to get off my chest.

When I first started trying to record demos, I had to record the guitar one chord at a time and then stick the bits together, because I hadn’t got the hang of changing between chords yet. But then my inability to play properly meant I ended up learning quite a bit about production that I probably wouldn’t have bothered with if I was a virtuoso guitarist, so it’s all good.

LTW: You were inspired by Viv Albertine’s autobiography, what was it about that book/her?

ND: It was the section about her learning to sing. She talks about being desperately ashamed of her voice and going for singing lessons but then not being able to bring herself to sing and ending up just crying. I found that so relatable, and before reading the book I had no idea that sort of deeply ingrained shame was something you could overcome. I’d imagined that all singers were super-confident extroverts with this God-given talent. I didn’t know singing was something you could learn. And also, even though none of the singers I love have conventionally ‘good’ voices, I somehow hadn’t made the connection that having an unusual or distinctive voice was a good thing, or at least I didn’t think it applied to me.

Viv made me think that I had stuff worth saying so, fuck it, I was going to say it. She totally changed my life.
She’s also really honest about how long it takes to learn the guitar. I’d totally bought into the punk myth where you buy your first guitar and do a gig the same night, which is obviously total bollocks. It takes AGES of practising in your room like a nerd.

LTW: You were born and raised in Liverpool, a very musical city… what was being played around the house when you were growing up?

ND: Absolutely nothing. My parents don’t like any music except The Beatles. (As a teenager, when I heard the Manics singing, ‘I laughed when Lennon got shot’ I decided in that moment that I would follow them to the ends of the earth.)

LTW: Would you say music was always in your blood?

ND: I don’t know. I was obsessed with music from the day I randomly heard ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ on the radio at some point as a little kid in the late 80s and thought it was the most beautiful, sad, poignant thing I’d ever heard. But I just never thought music was made by people like me (shy, awkward, not from a musical background). Discovering I can make music has been the best thing that’s ever happened to me, but it’s also tinged with sadness and resentment because I wish I’d done it so much earlier. But then again, I’m not sure I really had anything to say when I was younger, so if I had made music maybe it would have been shit.

LTW: How did you find yourself in West Cornwall?

ND: Penzance is my favourite place in the world. The people are great, there’s tons of music, and the coast and the moors of West Penwith are just magic. Everyone said we wouldn’t like it here in the winter, but winter is the best time. I love running on the coast path in the pissing rain.

Before we moved here, we were living in south London. We started off in Brixton, which was great, but every time we had another child we got priced further out, until we were waaaay out in the suburbs and it didn’t even feel like London anymore, so we thought, sod it, time to go somewhere nicer.

LTW: Was it a bit a of shock moving from one end of the country to the other?

ND: Only in a good way. I’m not a total recluse, but I really do need quiet and time away from people. I never, ever got that in London, because I could always hear my dickhead neighbour yelling into her phone, or a radio playing shit music somewhere, and it drove me nuts.

LTW: When you first contacted LTW back in 2022 I thought you were joking when you said you recorded in a Pig Sty, but you weren’t joking were you?

ND: Nope!

LTW: Has it been modified over the years?

ND: Yeah, as pigsties go it’s pretty nice. It’s got a roof, and electricity, and I put a WIFI extender in. I would never have been able to make music if I hadn’t had a private space to do it where nobody could overhear me.
I had no choice but to record out there at first because my kids hated my singing so much. They’ve got used to it now and I’m allowed to sing in my bedroom, which is progress, but it does mean that I didn’t go out to the pigsty for the whole of last winter, and now it’s now full of mould. I’m not really sure what to do about that. I haven’t opened the door since the spring and now I’m scared.

LTW: For this release you’ve also recorded in Pembrokeshire too?

ND: Yep, I was fortunate enough to go record in the beautiful StudiOwz with the lovely Owain Fleetwood Jenkins and some incredible session musicians, which is all FAR too posh for me but let’s not question that for now.

LTW: Over the last couple of years you’ve been spreading your wings and playing gigs in London and also a couple of festivals, how have those gigs come about?

ND: When I first started doing music I was very clear in my mind that I was going to be an enigmatic recluse who makes music in a pigsty and never, ever performs live, mainly because I didn’t think I’d ever be able to play guitar and sing at the same time, and if I didn’t play guitar I wouldn’t know what to do with my hands. But at some point, I got better at both singing and playing the guitar, and I thought maybe it might be nice if people actually heard my songs.

I had an idea that maybe there was something called an ‘open mic’ where I could go and have a go at performing, just to check whether I would die, but I knew if I went and did a couple of open mics to see how they went they would probably go really badly, and I’d be too scared to play live again. So I made myself a little chart with the numbers from 1-50, and I told myself I was going to do 50 open mics, and I wasn’t allowed to give up until I’d ticked off the whole chart. It didn’t matter how badly I played or how humiliating it was – I had to give it a decent go.

So I made a ton of mistakes, and sometimes I couldn’t remember how to breathe so I couldn’t sing any of the high notes, but it only took about 8 or 9 goes before I stopped praying the pub would burn down so I wouldn’t have to play. People seemed to really like my songs, and nobody threw anything, and only a couple of people were twats to me (and that’s all material for the autobiography anyway.

Also, joke’s on them because none of them have supported Evan fucking Dando).

Eventually one of the pubs I was playing at offered me a gig, and a few people who’d seen me play asked me to support them… And then I discovered that you can just Google people’s email addresses and ask them for a gig, so I did that. A lot. So I’ve played at most of the venues down here in Cornwall, plus up in London at the Dublin Castle, and then this summer I did a few festivals, including Bearded Theory, which was heaven – five days of amazing music wherever I went.

LTW: I was going to say, I believe the week after The End of the World or Whatever is released, you’ll be opening for Evan Dando…

ND: Oh yeah, I had almost forgotten about that because I am so very cool and nonchalant.

LTW: Do you have a wish list of other artists you’d like to be on the same bill as?

ND: Well, the Manics remain my favourite band, and of course I know all the words to Little Baby Nothing and have been practising it since 1992, so I could help them out with it if they wanted.

LTW: You’ve got a couple of gigs coming up in Penryn, is there a well-supported music scene in the area?

ND: There’s loads of music down here, but it’s a bit like living on an island, cut off from the rest of the world, because so few touring bands come down here and so few bands from here tour elsewhere. I live in Penzance, which is a tiny town really, but there’s live music most nights, if you know where to look for it. I think we punch far above our weight musically!

LTW: What next? Albums? Tours? TV’s getting thrown out of hotel windows.

ND: The End of the World or Whatever is the first single from the EP of the same name, which I’m going to be releasing one song at a time over the next few months, or you can just go buy the CD on my Bandcamp. I spent most of the summer doing a filmmaking course so I could make ridiculously high-concept videos for each track.

Lots more gigs and festivals coming up in 2026. Probably not throwing TVs out of windows because they’re expensive and someone would have to clear it up. Also I’ve got bad shoulders.

LTW: Just before I let you go, you say you recorded the video in your living room, you don’t seem to have any furniture.

ND: The trick is, you push all the shite to one end of the room and put a green screen in front of it. If necessary, as you accumulate more shite you can bring the green screen forward, and when you’re sitting on the front doorstep you probably need to move house.

LTW: Thanks for your time Nell

Photos supplied by Nell Davies

All words by Iain Key. See his author profile here or find him via his LinkTree