Spotlight On... Sin Clair

Millie Kidd is a pretty busy individual. A touring member of The Horrors and key player in the recently revived The Ninth Wave (their first single since they went on an indefinite hiatus in 2022 came out just last week), Kidd releases her first solo work as Sin Clair at the end of this week, and it offers an exciting snapshot of what to expect from this bold new project.

Refusing to confine herself to one genre, Sin Clair is releasing not one, but two singles this week with Affirmations #2 and Exhale making up the double A-side. The former is a moody, glitched-out darkwave slice of electronica, while the latter is a tender and vulnerable piano cut that feels so intimate it’s as if you’re in the room with her; you can hear every pedal squeak, feel every breath.

Ahead of a launch show tonight at La Cheetah where Sin Clair will play in the round, we catch up with Kidd to talk inspirations, working with creative boundaries and find out why she wanted to show two opposing sides to her songwriting on her debut.

I think we last spoke to you in 2019 ahead of The Ninth Wave releasing Infancy, but we’ve never spoken one-on-one, so, firstly, I’d really like to know who/what inspired you growing up to learn an instrument, join a band and start making your own music?
Wasn’t that like last week? I grew up in a very musical household. I’m one of four siblings, and I spent many hours listening to my older brothers playing Debussy and Philip Glass when I was too young to understand why I couldn’t play like that yet. By nature it made me a pretty competitive person and I was constantly trying to be on their level.

I also played classical percussion in orchestras for years, and started writing songs with my brother when we were around 13 years old. A good judge of song quality is how much they would make our mum cry – I still use that metric today. Since I was about 15 I’ve been in a million bands at once. I don’t know what that says about my character.

A member of both The Ninth Wave and The Horrors, the music you’re about to release as Sin Clair doesn’t really sound like either, while the singles also sound quite disparate from one another, representing two very different sides of Sin Clair. Who were the artists you were listening to and drawing inspiration from while writing these two tracks?
Got to keep everybody on their toes. Nothing beats the melancholy of Leonard Cohen, Sibylle Baier, Townes Van Zandt, Scott Walker – they are always in my head. But the other side of my brain wants to be pounded with Two Shell, Burial, Nutrition-era Blawan. Then there’s somewhere in the middle where Tirzah, Actress and Ana Roxanne make everything calm again. It’s a bit of a melting pot.

With Affirmations #2, I wanted to challenge myself to make something super minimal in parts. I think there are 12 stems total on the Ableton session. I only used my Digitakt and a reverb pedal for my vocals to make it, and I loved having those boundaries. It mirrors Exhale in a way, only having a piano and vocal to tell a story. When recording Exhale, I had a visual reference of Doña Juana la Loca by Francisco Pradilla. I’d seen it at The Prado and it had etched onto my brain. The look on her face said all the words I was trying to say.

Image: Sin Clair by Stuart Simpson

Despite the two songs sounding quite different in terms of genre, there’s a softness, vulnerability and intimacy that I feel runs through them both, making them feel inextricably linked – what’s the story behind these songs and how do you feel they’re connected, if at all? I’m also keen to learn why you wanted to musically frame them in such different ways?
I see these songs as the ‘early works’ to a much larger project that exists under the covers. I wanted to showcase the two opposing sides of my songwriting, which meander together and apart to varying degrees throughout my work. Most of my songwriting at its core starts as piano and vocal, which I will record then let it rot on a hard drive for months. Only once I have forgotten about it, I will dig it up and completely tear it apart, making it almost unrecognisable – as demonstrated in Affirmations #2, which at one point was in a very similar form to Exhale.

If this was an episode of The Swan, Exhale would be the vulnerable, makeup-less woman showing all of her flaws, and Affirmations #2 would be the final reveal of your new wife with lots of plastic surgery, and only a little bit dead behind the eyes.

You worked with collaborators James Greenwood and Joel Patchett on these singles. How did these working relationships come about? How did you find the process and what was it like working with them?
I’ve known Joel through The Ninth Wave and The Orielles for years. He was a major part of why I even did a solo project in the first place. He really gave me confidence in my writing. We spent a few days together in Eve Studios in Manchester recording some really rickety piano, wanting the songs to be as bare-bones as possible. We wanted them to be slightly uncomfortable to listen to, as if you’re sitting a little too close to somebody. He’s taught me a lot – one of the incredibly good eggs of the industry.

I had been a big fan of James Greenwood’s work with Daniel Avery and Kelly Lee Owens, and we ended up working together on another project (that maybe one day will be released). For Affirmations #2, I needed somebody who knows exactly what a club sound system wants – James is one of the best in the game.

Somebody else that needs to be mentioned is Madison Velding-VanDam, who runs the label STTT – he has been such an instrumental part of my music finally coming out into the world. He’s gone above and beyond to make it happen.

You’re launching the double A-side with a special show at La Cheetah on 3 September – what can people expect on the night?
I’m doing an up-close and personal in-the-round performance, which I’m really looking forward to. It’s my debut headline show, a moment that I’ve been in denial of for years. It’s going to be incredibly intimate for everybody involved. Expect lots of samplers, synths, and too many buttons to remember to press. It’s quite funny to say that I’ll be playing lots of new material when I don’t have anything out yet. You’ll be getting the full spectrum – intense, emotional, noisy, big donks.

And what does the rest of the year, and in fact 2027, have in store for Sin Clair – is this just the beginning?
This is the tip of the iceberg. I'm very excited to support Gilla Band on tour in October, playing White Hotel (Manchester, 7 Oct) and ICA (London, 8 Oct) – they’re an all-time favourite of mine and it’s an honour to share the bill with them. I will also be supporting Storefront Church on their UK/EU tour in November. Before all that, I’m going over to LA to record some more music to add to my stockpile. It’s a very exciting time.

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Affirmations #2 / Exhale is out on 4 Sep via STTT, pre-save here; Sin Clair plays La Cheetah, Glasgow, 3 Sep

Follow Sin Clair on Instagram @sin_clair