Mint Julep

MINT JULEP - Shine

Keith Kenniff - Tell It To Your Heart

A song from our album "Save Your Season" as Mint Julep.This CD is available now from our shop. http://www.unseen.bigcartel.com/product/mint-julep-save-your-season-cd-pre-order

salt wash of the sea
in the heavy summer rain
i feel you move in softly 
and set me free

the motion of the morning light
carried us in from the black night 
i don't want to feel anything else but you
as you hold me tonight

you say it all the time
why don't we
why don't we

let's escape from this place
you always say to me
there's an end and we can begin again
far from here

a blur of color lit our way
replaced the black and grey
i don't want to be
anywhere else but here
as you breathe me in

you say it all the time
why don't we
why don't we

Formed in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2007, MINT JULEP is the husband-and-wife team of Keith and Hollie Kenniff. Subsequently relocating to Portland, Oregon, the duo cut a limited release album, Songs About Snow, in 2008 and the EP, Adorn, in 2010 – effectively a trial run for further recording in their home studio, the fruit of which is a sublime follow-up, Save Your Season, released by Village Green in 2011. The couple is currently writing and recording their next album, Broken Devotion, which is slated for release in mid 2013.

Hallmarked by Hollie’s seductive, dreamy vocals and a succession of memorably soaring choruses, all of it etched with Keith’s vivid, glinting keyboards, towering guitars and miscellaneous instrumental hooks, Mint Julep make lustrous modern pop music that is wistful and mellifluous yet simultaneously powerful, even epic – equal parts shoegazing romanticism and cool, Kraftwerkian polish. Their songs seem instantly familiar, like old musical friends, a ’classicism’ offset by the freshness and luminosity they exude as they usher you on a breathless ride through the sunlit uplands of electronic indie-rock.

Mint Julep was designed as a conscious departure from Keith’s previous, ambient-orientated projects. “When Hollie and I set out to do something, I wanted to find some way to incorporate her vocals into a slightly different style, rather than just write similar material to my solo work and lay her vocals over top”, he says. “I had the need to write something that had some distorted guitars, loud drums and was a little bolder than what I had previously done. We messed around with a track one night (which became ‘Stay’) and it was a fun process, so we just kept writing more songs so we could do a project together.”

Soon a working pattern emerged, with Keith composing music around Hollie’s lyrics or making tracks which Hollie would then add to. “It just developed after a lot of trial and error, and after a while the material started to plateau and began to sound like an album…”

A Pennsylvannian by birth, Keith Kenniff is an honors graduate of Boston’s esteemed Berklee College of Music, best known as the brains behind dulcet ambient/electronic practitioners Helios and the fingers on the ivories of post-classical piano minimalists Goldmund (the latter’s music once described by no less an authority than Ryuichi Sakamoto as “…so, so, so beautiful…”). A succession of albums under those aliases has made Kenniff the darling of discerning critics and his music has also been widely used in film, television and advertising, not least on the soundtrack to the 2012 documentary Bones Brigade, as well as composing for clients such as Apple, Facebook and Google.

Originally from Ohio, singer Hollie Kenniff maintains dual US/Canadian citizenship, having spent part of her life in Ontario. Aside from Mint Julep, she has collaborated on several additional musical endeavors in tandem with husband Keith, including a children’s music project, Meadows (inspired by the couple’s young son), whose debut longplayer was recently released, and an ambient diversion under their own names. An album of the latter, A Deep and Dreamless Sleep, is slated for release in 2013.


Mint Julep | Why Don't We (lyrics)

A cover Hollie and I did as Mint Julep of a Headphones (aka David Bazan) song.  

Our new Mint Julep album "Save Your Season" is available now: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/save-your-season/id476215151

Mint Julep - I Never Wanted You (Headphones Cover)

From the EP "Adorn" | available as Flac, mp3 here: http://www.unseen.bigcartel.com/artist/mint-julep

Mint Julep is Keith and Hollie Kenniff

Mint Julep - Arristea

Keith and I completed a cover of Curve's song "Horror Head". Curve was one of my favorite bands as a teenager, and Keith, who I introduced their music to several years ago, agrees with me that this is one of their best songs. I can't think of any other female fronted band that has impressed and inspired me so much. 

LYRICS BY TONI HALLIDAY:
"Fireworks, red and green I can see what they sing, but you are away / box you all in You always smile / Boxing ring / box him in the back of mules / with black almost You can really see, from the inside Across the void There's horror in my head When the blanket is gone From the throne in my castle Where I see the sun from In the comfort of this room The challenge died Remember you and me We laughed 'til we cried"

Mint Julep is Keith and Hollie Kenniff.  |  unseen-music.com
Artwork by Brian Young  |  http://losingtoday.me/

Curve - Horror Head (Mint Julep Cover)

My wife, Hollie and I (aka Mint Julep) are hard at work on a new album, but in the meantime we decided to offer a brand new track for free.  It is exclusively available through us and will not be on our upcoming album "Broken Devotion".  
www.facebook.com/mintjulepmusic | twitter.com/_mintjulep

Mint Julep music videos:
http://vimeo.com/36867236
http://vimeo.com/28453491
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LxckeXA5tY

don't think twice, close your eyes
and break her fall again
feel the words, out of her lips
as she walks out in the rain

hear for once, the way it was
it collides with us
full of fire, in an escape
the fading light, and the waves that break

don't you want to tame her
don't you want to tame her

your soft lips in mine
an island of stars, in the shining light
i get lost in it all the time

the distance in the dark
the places in between us
dreamless as a ghost
still as the air that moves through us

don't you want to tame her
don't you want to tame her

_________

photo by Alison Scarpulla 
http://shuttermade.com/alisonscarpulla

Mint Julep

JNO10