CONSIDER this an introduction. Shanine Gallagher is 22 years old. She lives in Glasgow but comes from the Highlands. She has been waitressing since she was 13 and can be currently found doing just that in Glasgow's West End. Oh, and she is not related to Liam or Noel, but she is a musician

It's the musician we're here to talk to. Gallagher - aka Ess Gee (you can probably work that one out) - has recently released a single called Pyromaniac Lover, her second. Like its predecessor, Bubble Queen, it is a sleek slice of minimalist electronica that throbs with melancholy and speaks of lived experience. Both singles have been coaxed into existence with the help of Joe McAlinden, formerly of 1990s guitar band Superstar, in his studio in Argyll.

Gallagher is still in the earliest days of her musical career. Her songwriting has to be fitted around the day job. It's a common story for twentysomethings and one that inspired Pyromaniac Lover, which is about "really feeling undervalued and disconnected from the outside world," she tells me during a 20-minute break on her waitressing shift.

She says she wanted to write about the “frustration of all my friends being trapped in jobs they don't want to be in and not having time to explore their talents creatively, just never getting projects finished."

So, it's not a confession of being a twisted firestarter, Shanine? "No!"

Both singles are promising tokens of a new talent. They’re aching conjunctions of Gallagher’s breathy, lived-in voice over a sparse but affecting electronic soundbed. Ask about what’s feeding into that musically and Gallagher namechecks bands like Desire and the soundtrack of Nicolas Winding Refn's 2011 thriller Drive, which played the blood-hot violence of the images against the cool blue throb of synths.

It's some distance from the music she grew up hearing around her. Gallagher was raised on the Morvern peninsula, in the village of Lochaline. "The middle of nowhere, pretty much," she says.

Inevitably there was a lot of ceilidh music around, but Gallagher's first interest in music started with school talent shows where she would get up and sing cover versions. It sometimes went beyond the school, too.

"We all went on a village hall tour. You were with your best friends in the minibus like, 'Yeah, we're rock stars.'"

What songs were you covering? "Oh, honestly I don't want to say it out loud. Things like Kings of Leon and Marina and the Diamonds. I think in our music class we had to cover the Buzzcocks and things like that."

I'm presuming that was your teacher's idea, Shanine? "Yeah, that was the teacher."

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Gallagher didn't start writing her own material until she met McAlinden on a music mentoring scheme, she had read about in a pamphlet she picked up in the school canteen.

"When I met Joe I had never written a song myself,” she admits.

“She played me a cover of a song she had done at school and, although I could hear a good voice in there, she was almost kind of mimicking the original singer,” McAlinden recalls when I speak to him later.

“I encouraged her to write something original, something she couldn’t copy, so that we could discover ‘her' voice. She had never attempted anything before and had just recently taken up guitar lessons, but she came back a few weeks later with not one but three original ideas which were absolutely fantastic. Great sense of melody and hook.”

Gallagher left home at 17 for Glasgow where she started making connections in the city's music scene. She also attended university in Ayr to study commercial music.

It wasn't an easy transition from her rural home, she admits, and for a while she even stopped making music. But that owed as much to the impact of the death of a close friend.

"That's where the break happened in the music. I couldn't really think what to write and I felt guilty for being able to be creative. It was just a horrible feeling and seeing all your friends suffer as well. I just felt really disconnected from the world at that time."

When, I ask Gallagher, did she get to the point she was able to put her feelings down in words and music?

"I think I almost got to breaking point. I was at my lowest and I just spoke to Joe about just coming up for a wee bit and recording because I hadn't been able to write for a while and it would just be really nice to get out of the city and come to the studio in Argyll."

The result was Bubble Queen, which became her first single, a song about grief and memory which aches with feeling. "When it finally came out,” she says, “I was just so glad because it was part of me that I just wanted to move on from."

Bubble Queen was her calling card. Pyromaniac Lover is another example of what she can do. There are more to come. The next single will be either Kill the Lights or Kiss Me Hard, she reckons. “Her songs are very honest, heartfelt, timeless and have a real dark edge,” suggests McAlinden. “All of which make her a very special writer.”

"I think we're just going to keep releasing singles until people have heard more of the music,” Gallagher concludes, just before getting back to work. “I just think it would be a bit pointless to put on a gig and then maybe like a couple of my friends turn up. It's been such a long time since I gigged and that's the part I want to do the most."

The singles Bubble Queen and Pyromaniac Lover are out now on Single Track.