Morgan McIntyre and Gemma Doherty, collectively known as Saint Sister, don’t like to take days off. Since the band’s beginnings just over a year ago, the duo, who’ve branded their musical style as ‘atmosfolk’, have been working flat out playing gigs around the country and building up a body of work so that they could catch up with already-established bands. ‘Even if we have to take a day off for any reason we get a bit antsy,’ says McIntyre. ‘I think we’re becoming a bit addicted to this so it’s easier for us to just get together and keep working.’
Having met for the first time playing against each other in a Battle of the Bands (neither of them won), Saint Sister have gone from strength to strength since being born out of what McIntyre and Doherty call their ‘post-college blues freak-out’. Their first EP, Madrid, was released in November on local label Trout Records, and immediately won acclaim in the Irish press and music blogs. A spacey mix of sparse electronica layered with Doherty’s harp playing and both members’ vocal interplay, their ethereal record is polished and impressive, especially considering the fact that they had been playing together for less than a year when it was recorded and released. The pair are deservedly satisfied with what they’ve achieved in such a short space of time, with McIntyre saying ‘We’re really proud of it and it was really fun making it as well. I think we got across exactly what we intended to. If we could go back and someone said you have an unlimited time to fix up anything or to rerecord, it we wouldn’t change a thing.’
The EP contains show stoppers such as Castles, the eponymous Madrid, and Blood Moon, and was co-produced by Alex Ryan, bassist for Hozier. Like many contemporary acts, Saint Sister’s music defies easy categorisation into any one genre, drawing influence from the likes of early-era Joni Mitchell and traditional Irish music – and maybe even a hint of Enya – to create a sound which is identifiably their own, an impressive feat for a first EP. They’ve come up with the term ‘atmosfolk’ to describe themselves, saying it just about covers what they do. ‘I guess that kind of came about, someone suggested it, not as a joke but just like… it’s a hard thing to define your genre!’ says Doherty. ‘Atmosfolk, it does what it says really. At the end of the day it’s folky and it’s nature, there are lots of folk elements there, lots of influences from different places. Folky with hints of electronica, atmospheric kind of stuff. It sums it up in a way I guess.’
Despite neither of them ever having been to Madrid, they are in agreement that it’s the perfect title for their debut, which has an unconscious theme of loneliness running throughout. ‘Madrid could be anywhere,’ says McIntyre. ‘It’s somewhere where you don’t really have an idea what it is, you can’t really conceptualise it but you think it’s better than where you are at the moment. It could be literally anywhere in the world but it’s somewhere that you are not, and you can’t really get to, whether it’s someone you love or someone you want to be with who’s there. So Madrid could be anywhere but for us it works that we haven’t been there. I think it’ll ruin the effect when we actually go. That’s the idea – that it’s a space in your imagination that you can’t really quantify but that you build up to be absolutely beautiful.’
Madrid grew very organically, starting off without a set structure or theme. ‘It wasn’t that we set out to make a lonely EP!’ laughs McIntyre. ‘It kind of just comes naturally that we don’t tend to write happy songs. I find it hard to write lyrics that are happy because when you’re happy and in an okay headspace the last thing I want to do is shut myself away in a room and start writing about it. When you’re on your own and you’re kind of lamenting, I think it’s easier to access that part of my brain. Basically I can’t be alone; I am the worst person, I’m so needy, I need people around me the whole time. So when I am alone I’m upset and I tend to write about it. I think that’s why it’s come across so strongly in all the songs. All the songs on the EP do touch on loneliness but I think that kind of became apparent afterwards, after we collected them and it kind of made sense as a narrative.’
The two come from different backgrounds in music and have different interests, but they blend together perfectly. Having studied music in Trinity College, Doherty is heavily focussed on instrumentation and arrangement, while McIntyre works more on the lyrical material. ‘Sometimes they’re written together in the same capacity, in the same room,’ says Doherty. ‘But a lot of the time an idea will come from someone on their own and we’ll bring it together at an early stage.’
Saint Sister already have plenty lined up for 2016 including gigs planned everywhere from Texas to Brighton and plans already in the works for a second EP. As they said, they definitely don’t like to take breaks. ‘Next year we’re going to South by Southwest in Austin and we’re going to the Great Escape in Brighton as well,’ says McIntyre. ‘We love touring around Ireland but it’s also great fun to just go to other places and bring your music to people who hopefully want to hear it elsewhere. We’re by no means exhausted, we have a lot more gigs coming up! It’s really good fun to see another place, and to go over together as well.’ Their favourite gig they’ve played so far has been in An Díseart Church in Dingle, which they say suited their sound. ‘We were up on the altar in a beautiful setting, it was really special,’ says Doherty. ‘You don’t get to play a gig like that in a church every day, so that was probably the most memorable for me.’
Between co-writing and arranging their songs, recording their EP and travelling to gigs together, they’ve settled into a routine very quickly and have adapted to living out of one another’s pockets. ‘We’ve pretty much spent every day together since. I think we got very lucky, I mean it definitely might not have worked given different people. Our temperaments are quite similar in how we work, very similar, so that’s helped us a lot. We got very comfortable very quickly in terms of our writing.’
If the result of working so hard is enchanting EPs like Madrid, we can only hope that Saint Sister continue to do so. The pair are under no illusions about the future, and their work ethic stands to them. ‘The old adage, the harder you work the luckier you get stands true,’ says McIntyre. ‘I think we’re just really keen on keeping our heads down and working as hard as we can over the next couple of months and hopefully continuing in the way that we’ve been going.’ Should they ever make it to Madrid, hopefully it’ll be just as beautiful as they’ve conceived it to be.
Saint Sister’s debut EP, Madrid, is out now on Trout Records and on saintsister.bandcamp.com
Words: Gráinne Loughran
Photos: Saint Sister
