Sky Larkin interview

Some bands get all the luck. One EP and one gig sums up Sky Larkin's musical contribution to planet Earth so far, yet for a band so young, there's a lot of promise locked away in the three piece, which came to my attention a few months back, courtesy of that none-more-American website MySpace.

'Traits and Traitors' is the song currently loaded on their profile, a heady mix of crashing cymbals, heartfelt lyrics and catchy guitar riffage. Well, with an influences list that combines ...Trail of Dead and M83 with Led Zeppelin and The Beach Boys, it suddenly seems to make sense.

"Nestor and I have grown up playing music together, so when I came back from studying in London with new songs and ideas he was the first person I brought them to" says front-woman Katie Harkin.

"We always knew we'd keep playing music together in one form or another, and we work with each other really well" follows drummer Nestor.

The trio, consisting of friends Nestor and Katie, recruited bass player/second guitarist Lindsay after a chance meeting at The Vine, "Katie and I became friends after I approached her in the ladies at The Vine a few years ago after they supported a band I'd come to see there - you don't see that many girls doing what she does so I wanted to talk to her" she says.

"It's scary to think in retrospect how chance meetings can be so important," agrees Katie.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

With so many interesting and varied influences listed, it's hard to know where Sky Larkin fit in, "We each have our own little pet corners of music and we're always trying to cross pollinate each other, but there are plenty of places our paths cross" Katie tells me, adding "I hold great pop songs in high esteem. It's become a dirty word which is a crying shame, weird but brilliant pop songs are the best."

"Our greatest loves are mostly shared, there are bands like Queens of the Stone Age and The Mars Volta we're all head-over-heels for" adds Lindsay.

"It's more about attitudes, honest music always sounds best," Nestor continues.

So, with their debut offering 'The Souvenir' out and about, I ask how the band actually goes about writing a song. "Katie usually comes into practice with the skeleton of a song" Lindsay tells me, "and then we improvise on it 'til the skin fits" adds Katie. Increasingly full of wise words, Nestor adds the final touch to the Sky Larkin ethos, "It's not formulaic, I think if we knew exactly what happens between nothing and having a song, it wouldn't be so interesting."

As with all bands from Leeds, they seem keen to get in the studio straight away and get another CD polished off, "We're recording at Ghost Town Studios for a day at the end of August, which will probably end up as almost a live session, so that'll be a more straightforward translation of our live sound" says Lindsay.

The new material will feature Lindsay for the first time also, as Katie tells me "at this point we've only recorded before Lindsay joined the band."

The band played their debut gig at Carpe Diem on 7th September, and their next live performance isn't until November, so you have plenty of time to write it in the diary.

If Sky Larkin are anything to go by, then there's still a whole lot left to discover in the much lauded Leeds music scene.