New Blood: Sky Larkin

From the familiarly humble beginnings of garage practices and basement jams, to releasing an album and touring the U.S., leeds' Sky Larkin have taken somewhat of an impressive leap forward. Cutting their teeth on the local underground circuit, the band released a smattering of singles over the past couple of years before attracting the attention of renowned label Wichita, home to Bloc Party, The Bronx and Conor Oberst to name a few.

The resulting debut album The Golden Spike - recorded in Seattle by John Goodmanson (Sleater-Kinney, Nada Surf, Death Cab For Cutie) - is a youthful, intelligent and ultimately energetic collection of guitar-fronted rock songs which has rightfully won them devoted attention from critics and fans from both sides of the pond.

As the band set their sights on Glasgow for their appearance at Glasgow's Hinterland festival, singer/guitarist, Katie Harkin takes time out from road games to give us an insight into the life and times of Sky Larkin.

So, how exactly did the band first come together?

"When I started thinking about starting a band I was living in London at university. But I knew Nestor (Mathews, Drums) from growing up in Leeds. We'd been in bands together before and there was drum kit in the basement of where I was staying when he came to visit me one day. So, we ran through some songs and decided that, yeah, we should do something. We recorded demos together with just me and him doing all the parts, then we put them on MySpace and started getting interest from people who said that they were liking what we were doing straight away, which was really awesome. But we weren't actually a band, we were two people living in different cities who just put demos on the internet. We met Doug (Adams, Bass) through mutual friends from the Leeds music scene. He came to Leeds from Wales. We had a girl called Lindsey playing bass originally but she left because she was really a guitar player. Then Doug offered to play in the band; I was talking to him over MSN messenger and he was like, 'yeah, I can play the bass!' So that's pretty much how it started."

Did you know right from the start what sort of sound you wanted to go for, or was it just a case of CD swapping and jam sessions?

"Yeah I think that's more interesting rather than saying, 'lets start a band that sounds like this other band. I think it was more natural than that."

Since the album came out, there's been comparisons to everything from Riot Grrrl references and Sebadoh to even the odd U2 comparison, but who would you say inspired the band and particularly the album?

"We're definitely inspired by the DIY ethic of a lot of bands from that time, but no, Bono's not a huge influence of mine I'm afraid!"

Was the decision to work with John Goodmanson on your album something that you had planned or thought about for a while? How did that come about?

"When Wichita said 'let's make an album' they told us to draw up a list of dream producers and we'll see who takes the bait. John was at the top of that list. We basically just turned over all the records we really liked to see who recorded them and his name kept cropping up again and again. We were lucky in that we recorded half of it at his place, and half at Death Cab For Cutie's studio. We only had our baggage allowance and our instruments so they lent us a lot of equipment like amps and drums and guitars."

In terms of how long the album took to come out from the time you formed to its release, are you glad you didn't rush it?

"To me, two and a half years is not a very long time for band to actually get their sound together and their songs together. I think that you've got to stand by your debut album for the rest of your life, so we wanted it to be something we could really hold onto and be happy with. I think it's the blessing and the curse of the internet that things are available so quickly. This transparency to the process of being in a band means that people have really been able to watch us grow up from our early recordings rather than it all being hidden away, but i suppose the flipside to that is that when bands are really in like an embryonic stage, there's too much pressure put on them. But I think we never really bowed to that. People just need to realise that there is such a thing as a work in progress."

You're going to be a joining a fairly diverse line-up at Hinterland festival this year - have you played sprawling city festivals like this before? It can often be a pain to try and catch everyone you'd like, but how would you rate them?

"We've done In The City, Camden Crawl and The Great Escape, which we're doing again this year, along with Live at leeds, and Liverpool Summer City, so yeah, it's nice to not get muddy! I feel like I earned my stripes for these kinds of festivals because we played SXSW this year and you really need to be on the ball because it's so massive. I've got the hunger for that sort of dashing around town, trying to find bands."

Did you manage to catch anyone particularly exciting?

"It was a complete fluke but me and my friend were trying to go and see the band, Women because I'd never seen them before, and we were walking down this street and she said 'I think this is the bar that they're playing in' and as we walked past i thought, 'this doesn't sound like what i've heard of them before, this sounds like a Dinosaur Jr. song'. 'It is a Dinosaur Jr. song!' Then we walked in and Dinosaur Jr. had just started playing. It was a secret show and as we walked in, people started coming in off the streets going 'Oh my God!'. It was like the pied piper as soon as they started. We were standing there with our mouths open, jaws dropped, and then we turned around and there was Dananananaykroyd with exactly the same expression on their faces!"

The new single, Antibodies, is to be released on cassette, which is a nice touch, but what sparked that idea?

"Basically we wanted to do some kind of release that had a bit of extra content involved in it that we could kind of generate ourselves. So, one side that is the single and B-sides, including remixes from Johnny X from Kenickie, and Callum from Dananananaykroyd. Then on the other side we've got ten minutes each to do what we want with, so we've each got little individual treats that aren't necessarily all musical. But you'll have to wait and see!"