THE video accompanying Othr Grls, a stand-out track on last summer’s debut EP by Dundee duo St Martiins, exudes awkward, youthful charm.
Shot like a shonky home movie in their back garden, it shows a succession of cute pups being fussed over by frontwoman Katie Lynch while bandmate Mark Johnston sits by the garage, concentrating on his guitar from under his fringe.
Those joyful DIY visuals suit the song – a playful, earnest track that sees Lynch’s cooing vocals flutter around Johnston’s lithe, Afro-pop-inspired guitar lines. St Martiins have moved on since then however, explains Lynch.
“It’s only with the last single, and what we’re to start releasing now, that I feel were are getting there, that we really know what we are doing,” she says, referring to wistful recent single No It’s All Over and Ur So Pretty, a delicate slice of soulful jazz-pop.
“As much as I like the other stuff, it wasn’t right. It was more like an indie band, and that’s not what we ever wanted to be. The style has gone through many different twists and turns, and it’s only quite recently that we were writing stuff that we could really be proud of, without trying to sound like other people.”
She continues: “I’ve always had this idea of us as quite a classy band, and the music now, I think, reflects that.
“It’s got a lot darker too, which I think is good. Some of the things I used to sing about would quite often conflict with the music, whereas now things are more in unison. It feels like the real beginning now.”
Now in their early 20s, the pair first met more than 10 years ago at high school.
Their style and influences may have changed over the years, but the distinctive, core St Martiins sound goes back to those days, says Lynch.
“I met Mark for the first time when I was 11,” she says. “Then I moved school, and Mark contacted me. I was a singer, into classical and musicals. That was very much what I wanted to do then, sing in the theatre.
“He knew I could sing and asked me if I could sing for this band that he had. The band was just him, a 13-year-old boy, so you can imagine the calibre of some of it. I don’t know why I took him up on it but I did. I’ve always thought me and Mark were the kind of people to get thrown together by the universe. We’ve had so many ups and downs but we’re still somehow together.”
St Martiins Mk 1 fell by the wayside, with Lynch fronting another band, Seems, as well as developing her solo work as 4mina, a guise she appeared under in Glasgow last month for the website launch of Love Letters, “an independent, printed publication dedicated to femme/non-binary people in music”.
After a couple of years of poor health, Lynch reconnected with Johnston when they were 19 and began St Martiins “properly” two years ago.
Following a stint living in Glasgow, the pair are back in Dundee, where they sometimes record and rehearse at Magic Box studios.
“I don’t think Glasgow was particularly helpful for my own state of being,” says Lynch. “I was just working all the time to pay rent and we weren’t able to do much music. So we moved back. We have new management and a good team around us just now who do believe in what we’re doing. We’re releasing a lot of music, and there’s a sense of momentum.”
She adds: “We want to make things work in the scene that there is in Dundee. There’s a lot of promise here, and it often gets ignored.”
St Martiins play: Electric Fields festival (Aug 29 to 31), Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfries and Galloway. electricfieldsfestival.com; Outwith festival (Sep 5 to 9), Dumfermline. outwithfestival.co.uk; September 7, Poetry Club, SWG3, Glasgow, 7pm, £8.80. Tickets: bit.ly/StMartiinsPoetry; Loopallu festival (Sep 28 and 29), Ullapool. www.loopallu.co.uk www.facebook.com/stmartiins Ur So Pretty is out now
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