Forming Mint Julep in 2007, the Kenniffs originally had modest intentions for the band. “The project really just started out as a way to get my wife to sing, because I knew that she could but was kind of shy about it,” says Keith. Though the duo initially mined much influence from early-‘90s shoegaze, Mint Julep gradually shaped their sound by drawing inspiration from electronic music and from their shared affection for rough-edged music of varying genres (industrial for Hollie, punk rock for Keith). “It took us a while to suss out whether this was something we were just going to have fun with, or if we’d actually release our music,” Keith says. “But we ended up keeping at it, and now we’re at the point where we’ve created something with its own sound that’s very unique to us.” Noting that “it’s been great for Hollie and me to bond over making music, and to have that music feed into our relationship,” Keith points out that Mint Julep have found an even more enduring purpose in creating both Broken Devotion and its predecessor. “Writing music can be stressful, but there’s that joy that comes from creating something that you know you’ll have for a really long time,” he says. “We can finish an album and move on, and then go back years later and let the songs tell us what was happening then, what we were feeling. It’s a cool way to mark all these very specific moments in our lives together.”
