Nell and the Flaming Lips Cover Nick Cave’s ‘Red Right Hand’ on ‘Colbert’

Nell and the Flaming Lips appeared on The Late Show for a joint performance of their collaborative Nick Cave cover “Red Right Hand.” The song, off their recent Cave tribute album Where the Viaduct Looms, took on a psychedelic vibe in the clip.

The musicians released Where the Viaduct Looms in November. It’s comprised of nine Cave cover versions with vocals and instrumentation by 14-year-old Nell Smith and instrumentation and production by the Flaming Lips. The album was mastered by Dave Fridmann at Tarbox Road Studios.

“It’s always great to meet excited, young creative people,” the Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne said in a statement. “With Nell we could see she is on a journey and thought it would be fun to join her for a while and see if we could get things going. It was a great way to connect with her and help harness her cool attitude to making music.”

Smith added, “I still can’t really believe it. It was a really steep learning curve but Wayne was so encouraging when I was struggling with a few of the songs that I kept going. I hadn’t heard of Nick Cave 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.”

Cave has since given the songs his stamp of approval, writing on his website The Red Hand Files that he is “a fan” of the work.