Meet Saint Clair, the London band combining classic guitar sounds with their own fresh approach

It’s late May in Brighton, and one of the first truly gorgeous evenings of the year has led many at The Great Escape Festival to contemplate whether opting for sunny beachside pints might be a more preferential if undeniably lazy alternative to watching new bands in a dingy basement.

But for those over at the Green Door Store, their commitment to seeking out greatness is being fully rewarded. London risers Saint Clair have packed out the venue with a sound that feels like it’s been around for eons, but incredibly fresh at the same time. Their hazy distortion and subtle punk sounds have drawn natural comparisons to Radiohead and Pixies, but injected with a spirit which feels like they could be torchbearers for a whole new generation.

That mantra now arrives fully formed on their excellent debut EP Something to be Said, where intimate tales of fledgling romances and growing pains are pitted against their own beguiling sonics.

Now, it feels like only a matter of time before this band transcends those aforementioned small rooms for something else entirely. Read our interview with Saint Clair and listen to their music via our Play Next playlist on Spotify here.

This is the first time we’ve spoken, but I did catch your Brighton show. That felt like a big moment?

Toby Bardsley (guitar and vocals): It was a flag in the sand for the last year, you know. We’ve been pushing for a good spot there and we knew it was going to be one of those moments where people could really see us and get the vision we’re trying to put across. It was great for us and we came away feeling as happy as we could be. Things couldn’t have gone any better, I don’t think.

What does your first EP say about Saint Clair as a band?

Adam Anderson (bass): They’re all quite different but they have a distinct Saint Clair twist on them and there’s an underlying theme of familiarity and a bit of nostalgia. I want people to listen to it and truly relate to the themes of the songs and that’s extended to the artwork too. It feels ethereal, but also kinda nostalgic like you’re looking back at your childhood. You can’t go back there but you can remember how you felt at those times.

Toby: Adam said it really well. It’s trying to capture a sense of familiarity, but this is just the first EP and the start of what we’re really trying to do. We’re keeping making music and we want people to keep being excited by that. It’s the first step of the journey for us.

Lawrence Bordean (guitarist): I also like that these stories within the EP come from Toby, but they’re filtered through us as well. Toby has always said, ‘How does this represent us’? They have a sense of Toby-ism to them, be it the melodies he uses, but they all sit nicely together and that’s why we selected them to be part of this first body of work.

Did your own influences feed into the sound?

Beth Diana (drums): I was raised on quite a lot of heavy music, like Metallica and Deftones and a lot of hip-hop as well. But we all have different influences.

It feels like an exciting time to be in a band again, too. Do you feel that?

Lawrence: It does, but I also think the boat will be pushed out a little bit. We’re a guitar band, but we won’t be afraid to put a tiny bit of piano in a song alongside my guitar.

If you look at a lot of the alternative acts of the 90s, particularly towards the late, late 90s, I think that happened as well . People started to reinvent themselves and push the boundaries of the sound so you’re not put in a box. A lot of the stuff we’re writing recently will see me and Toby sit at a piano and write a bit of guitar, and then that’ll turn into a guitar song or sometimes it will turn into just a three-minute ballad where we’re staring longingly at each other!